You Can Read Canseco Like a Book

Regrettably, Jose Canseco waited until he’d become an ankle-monitored, house-arrested, probation-skipping, time-serving fool before writing his tell-all, out-all book.

Unfortunately, Jason Giambi came clean when the alternative was perjury and a few seasons in The Big House that Ruth Built. Reportedly. Giambi had a career and a life to save, both belonging to him.

Sadly, Ken Caminiti discovered crack before he found his conscience for Sports Illustrated. At least he had the decency to live -- and, in October, die -- with his demons, and not trade them for $23.95 a copy.

None jumped into the public confessional; they were pushed.

None exposed themselves or friends or teammates for the next generation’s betterment; they were coerced by greed, self-preservation and despair.

Canseco came out for one more payday, and perhaps a chance to diminish Mark McGwire; Giambi for one more season; Caminiti for one more chance. Reportedly.

They failed their game and they failed themselves, both in their methods and their accounts of them.

But, we knew that.

Now baseball has a steroid policy that is, at least, getting closer to the issue, and in time for the next great crisis.

That is, what to do when our aging, steroid-gargling players go public?

It seems baseball has only to wait for the next trying moment for one of its members to puddle up on the subject of steroids.

Coddled since childhood, fawned over, paid millions, left alone to their needles and bathroom stalls, they surface alone and unfulfilled and in search of scapegoats. And short a few bucks. Truth was scattered, to be sorted by agents and lawyers. It was easier when all we had to go on was assumptions.

It is the life baseball has chosen. It got in late on testing and enforcement, applauded the thickly muscled men who dragged it from its labor wars, and today suffers the consequences of that. In the cycle of abuse and denial and recovery, this is the blood-letting.

If the New York Daily News is correct, Canseco’s galley copies fingered McGwire, Giambi, Juan Gonzalez, Ivan Rodriguez and Rafael Palmeiro as steroid users, and Canseco himself as the dealer who regularly visited his own stash. According to sources, that is the story Canseco dictated to his ghostwriter; we’ll see if it gets past his publisher’s libel lawyers.

So, what BALCO did to this generation of sluggers, Canseco aims to do to the generation before it, without the complications of kick-the-door-in G-men and a federal grand jury.

Commissioner Bud Selig said Monday afternoon he had not seen the book, or previews of it, and so he would not comment. Players’ union chief Don Fehr declined to be interviewed.

Their amendment to the collective bargaining agreement -- detailing a stricter policy of testing and discipline for steroids -- is due to be ratified by the Players’ Assn. membership during spring training, a fact they contended should speak for itself.

In the meantime, those identified in reports of “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big,” appear content to stand beside Canseco’s considerable credibility gap and, mostly, let that speak for itself.

McGwire, Palmeiro, Giambi and Gonzalez issued statements, or had their agents do so, maintaining their innocence and, in some cases, running down Canseco.

If Canseco is determined to see his old pals dressed in his old orange jumpsuit, ankles and wrists shackled, figuratively speaking, he could be at substantial risk, according to a San Francisco libel lawyer.

Thomas R. Burke, a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, practices media and Internet law and teaches a class on the subject at the University of California. If the reports of Canseco’s book are accurate, and if McGwire believes he was wronged, he said, McGwire could sue for libel and lawyers hoping to represent him would mass at his door.

And wouldn’t that get messy.

“Libel laws are pretty hard to prove,” Burke said. “In this case, if Canseco said, ‘I saw him do it,’ there isn’t much chance for a mistake. It will mostly turn on whether the statement is true or false. So, it’ll be a question in court as to who is believed.

“He may choose not to sue Canseco, but it would be a pretty typical libel claim on the part of McGwire.”

Not that any outcome would save baseball, which apparently doesn’t need saving. Its fans come and go, the Yankees win just often enough to keep New York interested and no one really cares what steroids are doing to the players’ long-term health. When Canseco’s book-signing tour is over, there will be another whistle to blow, another pretentious statement from another agent, and nothing Canseco has done to McGwire, or vice versa, will change it.

As Burke said, “There’s no silver-bullet court decision that’s going to bring this to an end.”