from Amazon
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Sort of a Review of Canseco’s book, Vindicated
I ordered, received and read most of it. It is the kind of book that you probably do not want to read cover to cover unless you have absolutely nothing better to do with your life.
First of all, like his first book, it is not written well at all. Which is kind of ironic I should say that, given the long BTF thread about, among other things, the quality of my writing.
Also, it does NOT have a lot of new material. Much of the book is a rehash of stuff in the first book, almost word for word, boring transcripts of Canseco’s polygraph exams, the Mitchel Report, and the speech that he gave at the first Congressional hearing (the one with Sosa, Palmeiro, et al.), and some not-so-interesting stories of Jose’s personal life.
As far as “blockbuster” disclosures of players who were not mentioned in the first book (or the Mitchell Report, I guess), well, what the original publisher or ghost author (the guy who turned down Canseco’s proposal to do the book) said about there not being enough material on these “other players” is right on the money. There is virtually nothing that can’t be said in 1 or 2 pages and it is not particularly earth-shattering.
Warning: The following may be a spoiler.
1) He talks about Clemens material getting redacted from his first book and some interviews. The ONLY thing he says about Clemens and PED’s in this book, and which he apparently wanted in the first book, was that he suspected that Clemens was a juicer only because of his performance and size and a few comments he made to Jose about PED’s. He admits that he has no knowledge whatsoever that Clemens used PED’s, and in fact, he says that when he met Clemens and his lawyers in Texas, he though that perhaps he made a mistake about his suspicions.
2) He talks about how he personally introduced Magglio Ordonez to PED’s, and shot him up himself. I don’t know if that has ever been said publicly before or even if Ordonez is in the Mitchell Report.
3) He says that A-Rod, when he was much younger, and before he got married, was hitting on his wife and calling her on her cell phone. And he said that A-Rod was asking him about PED’s and that he (Canseco) hooked him up with a personal trainer who was also a supplier of PED’s. Canseco says that he has no idea what happened eventually between A-Rod and the trainer. He says or implies that A-Rod ended up taking PED’s but that he has no firsthand knowledge of such. He also says that he hates A-Rod’s guts.
End of spoiler.
That is it, completely, with the new revelations.
Now, Canseco seems to have a large ego, seems to be insecure, and seems to be obsessed with telling people how great a ballplayer he was, and how big and strong he is, almost to the point of it being ridiculous.
His claim that he wrote the book and outed all of the players for “the good of baseball” is dubious, but I don’t completely dismiss it. He thinks and says that history will remember him as “the one who saved baseball,” which is a little preposterous and egotistical as well.
All that being said, I think that Canseco got screwed by baseball, by many of his friends, by the media, and who knows who else. I also think that he basically has told the truth about virtually everything despite a lot of people’s effort to discredit him and call him a liar.
I actually have a lot of sympathy and respect for him and think that he got an undeserved, bad shake in a lot of areas. Obviously, I don’t know him, and although he seems a bit quirky, he may actually be a pretty good and honest guy, with admirable intentions. I don’t think that all the bad press he gets from the MSM and on sites like BTF, is fair.
As far as the book is concerned, it really is not worth purchasing. If you do nothing but read the above “spoiler,” you literally get the essence of the entire book, unless you really want to read about Canseco playing in a Sunday amateur baseball league or in the Golden Baseball League for the San Diego Surf Dogs.
Yeah, I felt pretty much the same way. And I’ve actually defended Canseco in certain areas online. Just because he may be doing this for money doesn’t mean he is necessarily lying. The one thing he said in that Nightline/Dateline/Whateverline interview that stood out to me was something to the effect of - “Let’s see how many people call me a liar.”
Appearing on The Surreal Life won’t help his cause and when members of the media point out that he does this for money and his intentions are off-base then most of America is going to combine the two and determine he is full of fecal matter.
Personally, I wanted some mad dirt on Alex Sanchez in this book.