Whaddaya Say, Jose?

Jose Canseco is doing the Jose Twitch. Everybody now! Crank your neck east, then crank your neck west, open your eyes extra wide, close them and open them again, gyrate your jaw, twitch your shoulders convulsively, arch your back, lift your knee up to your chest then put it back down again. Now, repeat between pitches.

The Jose Twitch sets the teenage girls off. Sometimes they even scream when he does it.

Much of the twitching is done to keep his back and neck loose, but a lot of it is pure habit. One time, as Canseco was watching one of his homers fly, he absent-mindedly bent his right knee up to his chest. It may be the first time ever somebody has warmed up for a home run trot.

Jose Canseco wants to be the male Madonna. "Yeah," he says, "in the sense of treading new areas. Somebody who's willing to take risks, somebody who isn't afraid to speak out, somebody who isn't bullshitting around, somebody with some style."

Canseco may already be the male Madonna. He's got the body. Photographer Annie Leibovitz liked it so much she stripped him to the waist for an American Express ad that has raised the country's estrogen level 12%. USA Today voted him Sexiest Athlete of 1988. Detroit manager Sparky Anderson once said Canseco had the "physique of a Greek goddess." There is little doubt that Canseco leads all zip codes in femail. And besides, who's a better Material Boy?

Jose Canseco has come to the conclusion that he needs a bodyguard. "Nothing serious," he says. "Just somebody with a black belt who knows how to handle an Uzi."

Where are you going to find somebody like that, Jose?

"Are you kidding me?" he says. "I'm from Miami!"

Jose Canseco's 1-900-234-JOSE hotline number actually works. Reporters covering the team sometimes get good, straight answers from it. And Canseco can't accuse them of misquoting him. Then again, there is some stuff on the hotline they might not use. For instance:

•What time room service ends in his Cleveland hotel.