… Have you heard about Jose Canseco’s new “Tell All” epic about Baseball and Steroids? He used Pete Rose’s publicist and the cover has Dan Rather wearing a Texas Air National Guard uniform… That tells you a lot right there. In sports the career journey from penthouse to outhouse is usually 3 Really Stupid Screw-ups… This Bruise Brother is definitely sitting on a “throne” using corncobs and a Montgomery Ward catalogue for this one.
WARNING: Reprinted from SimplySwagger.com. There are a couple of itty bitty ideological opinions buried here, but nothing so bad as to make opposing viewpoint holders like throw up or anything.
Dennis Rodman showed up in a bath tub in a Super Bowl ad for fancy countertops. If you reconcile that in 2005 then Jose Canseco writing about “shooting up” every fellow teammate is going down like warm brandy. All we are missing is Lattrell Sprewell, Randy Moss, and Ron Artest shilling for ViagLeviIalis.
You remember The A’s Bruise Brothers – Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire … then it became Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco … then Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and Jose Whattshisname … then Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy & the cork, and that big dumb Cuban under house arrest. Jose’s last ten years have rivaled the video rentals for Ishtar and any movie where J-Lo keeps her clothes on.
Jose and this tenured nutball from Colorado, Ward Churchill, need to coordinate their Andy Warhol minutes better. As if Boulder and the University of Colorado needed more civic embarrassment. This Churchill idiot has about three more Bill O’Reilly shows before he fills his 2005 speaking calendar with European Hate-America Rallies.
So, lets take a count …
Jose Canseco hypes his new tell-all about how every MLB player who can reach the warning track in batting practice is a cyborg … This Ward Churchill academaniac says it’s a shame the 9/11 “freedom fighters” didn’t take out Mall of America and Father Flanagan’s orphanage in Omaha … and Howard Dean is the new “VOICE” of the DNC. Gilbert Gottfried wasn’t available? Yes, 2005 is shaping up as the Year of Understated Decorum & Be Nice.
In addition to this column, I also post socio-cultural commentaries on www.simplyswagger.com Often the subjects would fit either venue. Outrageous losers gaining wide-spread notoriety for losing outrageously is nothing new in America. That worn out Andy Warhol cliché about “fame” is at least 30 years old and Andy probably paraphrased it from Plato or Pliny The Elder.
In the late 80s and early 90s, Jose Canseco “had it made”. He burst upon Major League 
Baseball with everything needed for Cooperstown EXCEPT, like Oz’s scarecrow, a brain. He was what baseball experts call “a five tool player”. He could run, field, throw, hit, and hit for power. He achieved the mythical 40-40. 40 Home Runs and 40 stolen bases in one season. Plus, he had that Antonio Banderas smoldering Spaniard look. Well, if Antonio Banderas was chiseled out of tanned granite. But, alas, Jose never got to see the wizard and ask for his brain.
After 4-5 years of monster numbers he suffered a series of nagging injuries that not so gradually eroded his once magnificent skills. No single incident better summarized Jose – The Later Years that when he was playing rightfield for the Texas Rangers and a fly ball literally bounced off his head and into the stands for a Home Run. True Story. That is almost impossible to do if you are trying to do it. It makes Jose’s career highlight reel.
No longer one of baseball’s most magnificent players, Jose began his sad odyssey into the realm of ridicule and locker room joke. He crossed all the bad boy jock thresholds … he beat up his wife several times … drove his SUV into his living room in a rage … dated Madonna (more on that below) … sold himself on e-bay … got arrested numerous times for “possession” … appeared on The Simpsons … and ended up with one of those house arrests ankle restraints. The picture of Jose with his ankle restraint is also in his highlight reel.
Jose has finally reached the celebrity basement. A Tell-All shocker published by Judith Regan. You all remember Judith. Former secret sweetie pie to the infamous Bernie Keric, Homeland Security’s Man of 1,000 Scandals.
In his book Jose outs every current slugger in baseball especially his former Bruise Brother Mark McGwire. According to Jose, Mark and all the others regularly injected themselves with performance-enhancing “steroids” during a period when baseball was struggling with what to do about such. Actually baseball is still struggling with steroids.
… America embraced Mark McGwire in 1998 when he and Sammy Sosa “saved baseball” with their record breaking home run race. Mark McGwire was a Paul Bunyanesque figure who hugged his son after his record breaking home run. McGwire admitted using a non-banned supplement during this stage of his career. McGwire is also Anglo-American which makes him unique among Hispanic Jose, Hispanic and brown-skinned Sammy Sosa, and African American Barry Bonds. If you don’t think that factors into this equation then you don’t follow American culture too closely, do you?
McGwire retired from baseball before he became a shadow of his former self … and went into retired athlete seclusion. No ankle restraints, no dates with Madonna, no SUVs in his living room, and no “Tell All” books published by Judith Regan.
In one of the more provocative chapters of his book, Jose tells what really happened with him and Madonna which apparently is “nothing happened”. A brainless stud jock that did NOT have sex with Madonna … that puts him in a category with the only 12 year old in Fresno that has never eaten at McDonald’s. While McGwire, Pudge Rodriquez, Raffie Palmeiro, and dozens of other sluggers are mad about what Jose says they DID do … Madonna is mad about what Jose says they DID NOT do. Her worldwide reputation as Earth’s #1 Skank is at stake … and some brainless pair of biceps goes public that it was just “dinner and a movie and a quick kiss at the door”. The nerve of that lout! A great opportunity for Paris Hilton to gain some skank points on Madonna.
For sure Jose will be on Larry King before you can say “ratings spike”. Oprah, Howard Stern, maybe even The View where he and Meredith Viera can reenact his Madonna date.
- Some will believe everything Jose says because they want to believe all celebrities, especially athletes, have clay feet and should be knocked off their pedestals.
- Some will not believe anything Jose says because they take comfort in hero worship and cry out “Say it ain’t so, Shoeless Joe”.
- Some are wondering why I mentioned Howard Dean in the 5th paragraph.
Me, I wonder why he DIDN’T have Dan Rather posing in a Texas Air Guard flightsuit for the book cover. Wouldn’t that have been cool? What says “journalistic integrity in the new millenium” better than that old fraud.
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Swagger’s Stumper
Who played Marcus Welby’s young associate?
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