No Way, Jose

If you’re not a fan of the sports section, you may have missed this week’s biggest book news. The NY Daily News broke the story Sunday, reporting that Jose Canseco’s soon-to-be-released memoir, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big, “claims [Canseco] introduced steroids to the game and injected fellow Bash Brother Mark McGwire in the rear end numerous times in clubhouse bathroom stalls.”

He also describes watching disgraced Yankee slugger Jason Giambi and McGwire injecting each other when they both played with the Oakland A’s, and says he personally taught All-Star and potential Hall of Famers Ivan (Pudge) Rodriguez, Rafael Palmeiro and Juan Gonzalez to use ‘roids after he was traded to the Texas Rangers in 1992.

Palmeiro’s agent, Fernando Cuza, wasted no time responding to the allegations, calling Canseco a “train wreck” in Newsday. Cuza continued: “If he could have named the pope and the president, he’d probably have named them, too.”

As Cuza may have known, Canseco does, in fact, name the president, claiming that George W. Bush — the Rangers’ general managing partner in the early ’90s — must have been aware of his players’ steroid use but “did nothing about it.”

The NY Daily News goes on to describe the book as “an homage to steroids”; “Canseco says that he not only used them, but that all players should.” In a follow-up report, the Daily News adds that the “swollen ex-slugger” predicts steroids and human growth hormone “will eventually be decriminalized and help people lead longer, healthier and sexier lives.”

Scheduled for a Feb. 21 release, Juiced “is still being edited,” the Daily News reports. Today’s New York Times, however, reports that ReganBooks (“HarperCollins,” according to the Times) plans to take advantage of this “burst of publicity” by moving the release date up to Feb. 14 — Canseco’s Valentine’s day gift, no doubt, to Major League Baseball’s publicists.

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