Let's stop calling Jose Canseco a "whistleblower." The term whistleblower implies someone courageously sacrificed one's own well-being and risked his or her safety, way of life, and even death to expose a hidden, dark secret. Jeffrey Wigand was a whistleblower, as was "Deep Throat" W. Mark Felt. Canseco did not deny his steroid use, and went on to accuse just about every prominent MLB player of the era of using it too, whether or not he had facts. His motivations were clearly for self-gain: book sales, movie deals, speaking contracts, all of which he shamelessly demanded with conditions and asking prices beyond all reason. In fact, he has been repeatedly accused of extorting players for money to withhold their names.
So let's see, we have a manipulative self-aggrandizing public figure taking advantage of a witch-hunt like phenomenon where even an accusation of guilt is enough to taint your professional career forever. Does this sound familiar? It should, because it eerily parallels arguably the 20th century's most shameful act of American thought-policing.
Jose Canseco is to American baseball players from the 1990s and 2000s what Joe McCarthy was to American liberals from the 1930s, '40s and '50s. If someone had any allegiances to the Communist party, its sympathizers, or its ideology at any point, regardless of what they felt in the 1950s, they were seen as tainted from any job or achievement past, present, or future. And all McCarthy had to do was threaten someone to get people to sell their beliefs or actions short out of fear.
Less players are willing to cave to Canseco, because he's more interested in their money than anything political. In the case of the recent Alex Rodriguez scandal, it became personal due to his accusation of A-Rod hitting on his wife (from what we know about A-Rod, this is probably true as well). But even before Roger Clemens said it, we all know it's pretty damn impossible to prove a negative. We know this because that statement was heard widely in the era of blacklisting and McCarthy. But the people who are supposed to be fighting, strong-arming, and bullying — the media — are in fact giving Canseco more respect than anyone, simply because he does the work and says the things that they can't say without losing respect of the locker room.
There a two major differences between Canseco and McCarthy. The first, which probably has Canseco fare favorably to McCarthy, is that drug use was, in fact, so widespread in the 90s, that he's going to be right more often than he is wrong. Do we know that Canseco knew definitively that A-Rod used steroids? No. But we wouldn't have been that surprised if it was revealed, whether or not Canseco told us first. Even if he has no basis for what he's accusing a player of, he's more likely to be right about a guy with unnaturally huge muscles using steroids than an avowed leftist in the 1930s being a secret Communist. The second difference, which arguably makes Canseco worse than McCarthy, is that he was a rampant steroid user as well. McCarthy, was never a communist, and he at least somewhere, sometime, maybe early on, sincerely believed that fighting Communism was a good thing.
Article comments
1 - Tony
I think this totally misses the mark. You really expect someone with intimate knowledge into the world of steroids to have some kind of sterling reputation? Canseco's record speaks for itself. Nearly every player he has called out, most recently A-Rod, either has tested positive or at least showed up in the Mitchell report.
It's like Sammy Gravano ratting on Gotti. Obviously Gravano had character flaws, he was essentially a hit man. But only someone with those character flaws could have his level of inside and intimate understanding of the Mafia, enough to bring down Gotti himself.
Canseco is a piece of trash, but he's a piece of trash that, because of his early usage and networking in the "field," knows everything about the culture, system, and usage, of steroids throughout this period.
His motives don't matter. What matters is, regardless of why he is doing it, the majority of the information he is giving in correct and this information can be used to set history straight on this disgraceful era.
2 - Charlie
I don't really think anyone inside baseball has called Jose a "whistleblower" all these years. If anything, players, ex-players and the like and pundits (like us?) have called him a rat, and a self-centered one at that. But more often that not, this rat has proven to be right time and time again (ex. A-Rod, whom Canseco couldn't believe wasn't in the Mitchell Report, McGwire, Juan Gon,, Roger Clemens, before he backed off for whatever reason, to name a few).
Almost every big or formerly big name Canseco has mentioned (Magglio Ordonez aside) has at some point been later linked to steroid use, or in the case of Ivan Rodriguez, reasonably assumed to be doing the juice via his non-denial denial to an AP reporter recently, who asked him if he thinks he's in that list of 104 positive steroid tests from 2003 - his answer was "Only God Knows."
And regarding Magglio, based on Canseco's ever-growing accurate claims of steroid use in baseball, it's only a matter of time before someone finds evidence that he used steroids or that a reporter asks him about A-Rod and those 100+ (formerly) anonymous steroid test results - and gives evasive answers like Pudge did. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if and when the names of all those players who tested positive become public that Magglio Ordonez, Nomar Garciaparra and other big names are on there. It will be a sad day for baseball to be sure.