Jose Canseco is trying to get some attention, now that he’s totally out of baseball. Several reports this morning say that some claims from his upcoming book “Juiced” say that former Rangers were introduced to steroids by him. Some of the claims he makes were that he introduced Pudge, Raffy, & Juan Gonzalez to steroids when they were all teammates on the Rangers in 1994. He also claims that George W Bush (who was owner of the team at the time) “must have known” about the steroid usage. He also claims to have personally injected Mark McGwire with steroids, and that he, McGwire, & Jason Giambi all did that together while they were all with the A’s.
Rangers management over the weekend seemed to make a point that the current administration of the team wasn’t around when all this was alledged to happen (they weren’t), and the GM at the time (current TV broadcaster Tom Grieve) said on Monday morning that Jose’s comments were a joke, and that he’s at a new level of embarrassment, also calling the use of George W’s name a complete cheap shot. Even Rusty Greer came out and said he never saw anyone use them in his 11 years as a Ranger.
Now I haven’t read the book yet (it isn’t scheduled to come out till Feb 21st), but it seems to me at this point that he’s trying to go “Uh, I did it – everyone else did, so I’m not such a bad guy”. Jose hasn’t exactly been the model citizen the last few years, and my religion dictates that I should believe people and be nice to them, but it really seems like an attempt to make a few bucks by raising allegations in a book that aren’t exactly true. However, I can’t disprove them either – I wasn’t there, nor I suspect is anyone else who might read these words of mine. It just all seems a bit “out there”, even given the current bruhaha in the last 12 months over steroids in baseball. Don’t also forget Canseco’s old spousal abuse charges from the past – just go to Google and search for ‘Canseco “spousal abuse”‘ – you’ll see it.
Here’s a few links about this steroid stuff from the various local newspapers this morning:
DMN Article 1 | DMN Article 2 | Ft Worth Star Telegram

2004 Ranger reliever Jeff Nelson returned to the Seattle Mariners today on a minor league deal. This is Nelson’s third go around with Seattle, having previously pitched for them from 1992-1995 and again in 2001-2003.
I remember when we signed him, I thought it was going to be a good move. It didn’t turn out that way. For the Rangers in 2004, he only pitched 23.1 innings the entire season. He was 1-2 with an ERA of 5.32. Some of his other stats…
H – 17
R – 16
ER – 14
HR – 3
BB – 19
K – 22
WHIP – 1.52
Bottom line – not good. Won’t be missed from a baseball standpoint. Would be nice if he does make Seattle’s club and then we can bat against those stats. :)