Jose Canseco - The Next Babe Ruth?

[MFS62]

Like the Babe before him, can an arguement be made that Jose Canseco may have saved baseball?


Let me explain.
Ruth "saved" baseball by what he did after the Black Sox scandals that threatened the credibility of the game. He brought the fans back.
The steroid scandal was a similar threat. Whatever Canseco's motives, his book lit the fire under baseball to clean up its act. The scandal could arguably have been as damaging to the game.

The fact that Jose has the reputation that he has highlights the irony of my question.

Do you agree?

Think the book and the results, not the man.

Discuss among yourselves.

Later

[metirish]

You don't really belive this do you 62?, although steroid enhanced players did bring fans back in the mid-ninties......even on steroids Jose wasn't that good.

[Elster88]

He was pretty darn good. 40-40 club and all. You're right, he wasn't Ruthian but that was before we knew that 40 home runs would become a mediocre year for a roidhead

[patchyfogg]

I will say that Canseco allowed writers to name the names that he named, which helped them skirt libel laws. So, that's something.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Jose Canseco's behavior led to the ambiguous thread title "Canseco Twins in Fight," which led to the most inspired of satires, which saved the MOFo, which subsequently saved the internet. He's an American hero.

[Elster88]

I don't suppose that one is archived anywhere.

[Frayed Knot]

He didn't "save" shit!

Canseco is being given far too much "credit" for what essentially was a sleazy tell-all which contained enough factual errors that he himself was backing away from some of them even as he did interviews to plug the thing prior to it's release date. He reminds me of David Wells who did the same thing, or Charles Barkley who claimed that his qutobiography misquoted himself.

Wrote it? Hell, I'll bet he never read it.

[Guest OlerudOwned]

I thought this was going to be about how he'll be pitching and hitting now.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Now wait a Cansecond.

Canseco had less to do with the revelations than did journalists, particularly Verducci who broke the Caminitti story 4 years ago, and the Chronicle reporters on the Balco beat.

As I see it, Canseco merely saw an opportunity to personally profit on the residue of these events -- but only after he personally profited from keeping his mouth shut until he stopped profiting from breaking the rules. He's a vulture, a cheat, a backstabber, a hypocrite and a prick and if he wasn't the best player in baseball in 1989, someone else would have been.