Is Conseco Telling the Truth??

[Bonnie]

I'm wondering if in this case he may be telling the truth, or at least some part of the truth. I guess we will know when Spring Training starts and all the players look like Erkhel.

Seems the Baseball Commission turned a blind eye either way?

 

[onedomino]

Canseco on 60 Minutes: Steroids Made Career Possible

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/baseball/mlb/02/13/bc.bbo.canseco.steroids.ap/index.html

Jose Canseco says he and fellow slugger Mark McGwire were never "buddy buddies" as teammates on the Oakland Athletics, but had at least one thing in common that they talked about regularly: using steroids.

Canseco also admits in an interview with 60 Minutes that he would never have been a major league-caliber player without using the drugs.

"I don't recommend steroids for everyone and I don't recommend growth hormones for everyone," Canseco tells Mike Wallace. "But for certain individuals, I truly believe, because I've experimented with it for so many years, that it can make an average athlete a super athlete. (You and your fellow drug pals have helped to destroy the greatness of the American game. Your records mean nothing and should be deleted from baseball stats. Except as a nasty object lesson, it should be as though you never played the game.) It can make a super athlete incredible. Just legendary."

The interview was broadcast Sunday on CBS, one day before the release of Canseco's book, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big.

Canseco said he and McGwire weren't close, but often injected together and treated the subject of steroids as casual shop-talk.

"Mark and I weren't really in a sense of buddy buddies," Canseco said. "But there are certain subjects that we could talk about like obviously steroids and so forth."

McGwire, who has repeatedly denied steroid use, said in a statement to the television news magazine: "Once and for all I did not use steroids nor any illegal substance. The relationship that these allegations portray couldn't be further from the truth."

Canseco also told Wallace that steroids give athletes an edge besides increased size and strength. "A lot of it is psychological," he said. "I mean, you really believe you have an edge. You feel the strength, and the stamina."

Canseco also says he introduced steroids to former Texas Rangers teammates Rafael Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez and Ivan Rodriguez. All have publicly denied using performance-enhancing drugs.

"I injected them. Absolutely," Canseco said.

Tony La Russa, who managed Oakland when McGwire and Canseco helped the A's win a World Series, has stood behind McGwire's denial, telling "60 Minutes" that the first baseman got his strength and size from weightlifting and a careful diet.

La Russa was skeptical of Canseco's version.

"First of all, I think he's in dire straits and needs money," La Russa said. "I think secondly ... I think there's a healthy case of envy and jealousy."

60 Minutes planned to air more of Canseco's interview in its Wednesday program.

Canseco hit 462 home runs in a major league career from 1985-2001. (those home runs mean nothing) A few years ago, he claimed that 80 percent of major leaguers had taken steroids.

Baseball recently adopted a tougher steroid-testing program after the sport came under increased scrutiny about the drugs. Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi testified before a federal grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative known as BALCO.

 

[krisy]

I just hope Manny Ramirez(sp?) of the Red Sox doesn't end up in all this...he's my 10 year old son's favorite player!!

I think the steroid use definitely goes to their heads as well. I remember when the A'splayed the little 'ol Cincinnati Reds in the World Series in the early 90's. Boy they were cocky and the Reds swept them in four straight games.

The whole thing is sad,especially when the kids find out their "star" player wasn't really a star at all...at least without a little help. :chillpill

 

[dmp]

All the athletes have about the same credibility in my book. I wouldn't be surprised either way.

 

[Bonnie]

I just hope my guy Piazza isn't involved. If you look at the size of some of these guys you can tell, McGuire was huge. But you have to wonder what Conseco's motivation was beyond his testimony to a Grand Jury. Maybe just money?

 

[musicman]

I'm inclined to believe LaRussa.

 

[Bonnie]

Ban baseball's steroid users for life
Ben Shapiro


February 16, 2005


Baseball deserves better than this. With spring training beginning this week, coming off perhaps the greatest playoffs in the sport’s history, all the talk is about a former player and his allegations of steroid use. Jose Canseco was a circus freak during his playing days, a man so bulky that it was always surprising when he could extend his arms far enough to get the bat head over the plate. There’s no denying his incredible talent – during his early days with Oakland, he was the best player in the game. But he became more famous for his idiotic antics – bouncing a fly ball off his head and over the fence for a home run, for example – than for his batting accomplishments.

But Canseco’s latest antics are no joke. According to press accounts about his new book, “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big,” Canseco alleges that he personally injected former home run king and teammate Mark McGwire with steroids, and states that he used steroids with Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro, Ivan Rodriguez, and Juan Gonzalez. Palmeiro and Rodriguez are surefire Hall-of-Famers for their statistics. Canseco also mentions Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada, and Bret Boone.

The question on everyone’s lips: is Canseco believable? In a word, yes. Anyone who doesn’t believe that McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds were on the juice is living on a different planet. Just look at old pictures of these players. Bonds used to be a string-bean – now he looks like he could play linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers. His head has changed shape and size dramatically. Sosa, too, went from beanpole to bulky behemoth. McGwire was always large, but he played with Canseco early in his career.

It isn’t just the major players, either. Remember Brady Anderson, formerly of the Baltimore Orioles? In 1996, he hit 50 home runs while looking like a mini-Schwarzenegger. The year before, he hit 16 home runs. The year after, he hit 18. Is that a coincidence?

In 2002, former Most Valuable Player Ken Caminiti (who would subsequently die of a drug overdose) admitted his own steroid use and said that he believed over half of the players in MLB were using steroids or human growth hormone. Current Red Sox hero Curt Schilling told Sports Illustrated, “I’ll pat guys on the a--, and they’ll look at me and go, ‘Don’t hit me there, man. It hurts.’ That’s because that’s where they shoot the steroid needles.”

This scandal threatens the very integrity of the game. Baseball personifies the American vision: an idyllic field of green, a game that glorifies the individual within the team context, the reverence for history. Baseball is a game enmeshed in history. From Ruth to Mays, from Aaron to Gehrig, from Walter Johnson to Sandy Koufax, from Honus Wagner to Cal Ripken Jr., baseball’s past makes it what it is today.

Now its records are under attack from cheaters. As Schilling stated, “When you add in steroids and strength training, you’re seeing records not just being broken but completely shattered.” To allow cheaters to hold records gained legitimately is to pervert the history of the game.

There’s no way to evaluate what players like Bonds and McGwire would have done had they not been on the juice. The truth is, we shouldn’t have to consider those calculations. It pains me to write this – the 1998 season, when it masqueraded as reality, was pure magic – but Bonds and McGwire and anyone else who is found to have used anabolic steroids and/or hGH should be banned for life. This isn’t unprecedented, and it isn’t unfair. In 1919, the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, and Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis banned eight members of the team from baseball for life. Incredible players like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Eddie Cicotte and Buck Weaver are still prohibited from ever entering the Hall of Fame. But it wasn’t until after the scandal that Major League Baseball instituted a rule prohibiting gambling – when the Black Sox gambled, they weren’t formally breaking the rules.

Juicing up is no less reprehensible than gambling on the game. Just because the rules didn’t explicitly prohibit it at the time doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong, and that the players didn’t realize it was wrong. The only way to recover what was lost is to ban the players who participated, and wipe their records from the books. Give the records back to Maris, Ruth, Aaron, and the rest. And let a new generation of players learn that there is honor in baseball.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/printbs20050216.shtml