Jose Can-snako is speaking again. Apparently he's marketing a new book and seeking to boost sales by pointing a finger at New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez. In a recent interview Jose claimed to have "stuff" on A-rod, called him a "hypocrite" (of all things) and added that Alex "was not all he appeared to be".  This is certainly not the first time that Rodriguez has been accused of being a huge phony but what exactly does Jose mean? For obvious rea$on$ Can$eco wa$ not willing to di$clo$e any other information.

I personally think that Jose would have included any steroid related information involving Rodriguez when he published "Juiced" in 2005 if he truly had any. In some ways a sequel tarnishes the credibility of his first book, which many people have considered to be gospel. Sure Jose was looking to make money by bringing down others with him but that doesn't mean he wasn't telling the truth. Maybe he simply wanted to clear his guilty conscience.  Yeah right...and perhaps Lindsey Lohan really isn't a drunk, insecure, baggage-filled hoochie. A second book by Canseco puts serious doubts in my mind regarding anything he says. If he wanted to "drop dimes" on former players he should've gotten it all out in the open the first time. Oh...and by the way...just who is he to call anyone a hypocrite?  

Truthfully though... I DON'T CARE anymore and neither should you. I don't care that Bonds is only 1 home run away from tying Hank Aaron. I don't care about Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettite, Gary Sheffield, Luis Gonzalez, Brady Anderson or any other player that people want to speculate on. I don't care whether or not Jose Canseco is telling the truth about A-Rod. I REALLY don't care about Can-snako himself.  I'm sick and tired of the whole sordid steroid scandal along with the angry mob's cries for "justice". Especially since too few can even reach a consensus on what the word justice means in the first place.

Should all players who so much as even tried steroids once have their entire careers go up in smoke? How about if they did "roids" for two months? Three months? One season? Two seasons? Can I get four? How about five? SOLD to the overzealous fan in the third row currently foaming at the mouth! Ban all those cheatin' bums from the game and strike everything they've ever done from the logs of professional baseball! It's the only way to ensure justice and the integrity of the game!  Uhhh...not exactly. This is your friendly neighborhood sarcasm alert.

 

Please don't make me ill with further blind, puritanical, judgmental, close-minded rhetoric. It's more likely the only way to sentence the game of baseball to certain death. We might as well use a bat sawed in half by a Mariano Rivera cutter as a wooden stake and plunge it into the hearts of baseball's bloodsuckers. 

 

 

There are those who believe that life here began out there.  Oops...that was from the 1970s version of Battlestar Galactica. What I meant to say is there are those who believe that knowing the truth is not always a good thing. Whenever a person claims that they "would want to know the truth no matter what" I always wonder why. Sometimes the revelation of truth provides absolutely no benefit.

 

 

Let's say that a meteor was going to annihilate life on Earth in the year 2011 and people at NASA knew about it. Should they tell us just because you'd like them to? Never mind that chaos and anarchy would ensue along with murder and plunder because hey... we "deserved" to know. Wouldn't those be grand times during the end of days?

 

 

How about some of us married people? We hopefully have spouses who are good parents, our best friend and vital to our happiness. Heck, let's include anybody in a serious relationship. What if during much younger days, before we met our "special someone", they were very sexually "adventurous" for lack of a better term? Is that something you'd need to know? Would it change how you looked at them? It probably shouldn't since they're still the same faithful companion who chose you above all others.

 

Maybe I'm in the minority but baseball is very much like these scenarios to me. Right now everything is a hypothetical and I'd like it to stay that way. I don't need or want to know. The answers people are looking for would only serve to satisfy their curiously selfish desires and would do far more harm than good.

 

 

I'll tell you what we do know. Baseball players...and LOTS of them... have tried steroids. Some of the players used them a handful of times...some of the players flat-out abused them...some of the players fell somewhere in the middle... and yes some of them never touched the stuff. Good luck sorting it all out cause they ain't talking. Who's clean? Who's a big cheater? Who's telling white lies? THAT WE WILL NEVER KNOW. I got $20 on David Eckstein. He's one strong runt (sarcasm alert #2).

 

Baseball may choose to disgrace a few sacrificial lambs by making public examples of them. Maybe one will even be undercover agent 007-55 and counting himself. Bring us the one they call Bonds. That would satiate the hunger for justice of some of the more weak-minded. This has always proven to be an effective strategy throughout time. Throw the masses a bone to shut them up that is. However, it's not justice. Not how I define it anyway. I'd say it sounded more like scapegoatism if such a word existed.  I simply feel that if the vast majority of offenders get to "walk" then they all get to walk. Who chooses which names get "blacked-out" on official court documents anyway? Can I call them if I ever get arrested for something?

 

 

This will go down in history as the dirtiest era of baseball since the notorious "Black Sox" scandal of 1919.  At the very least there will be permanent asterisks floating around in the minds of people everywhere.  This in and of itself should be enough. It is for me. The "Steroid Age" will be forever tainted no matter what more we learn. Move forward from here and make sure this never happens again. Just stop attempting to initiate what amounts to selective purges... purges that will finish the job of unconditionally ruining the game forever.

 

 

Chill out America. We really don't need to know everything. We already have a pretty good idea.