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'The Truth Hurts' Documentary Tells How Jose Canseco Paid A Heavy Price For Honesty

  • by: Alan Duke
  • (Sun, 26 Jun 2016 21:53:41 Z)

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Jose Canseco was once major league baseball's most-promising rookie. Three decades later, Canseco can't get a job in baseball, a game he loves, because he told the truth about his use of performance-enhancing drugs and named other players who used them. A documentary about his whistle-blowing honesty and the subsequent destruction of his career of his career gets a red carpet premiere Sunday night, June 26, 2016. It is aptly titled "Jose Canseco: The Truth Hurts."

The Cuban-born Canseco evolved from a fairly-talented ballplayer into the 1986 American League Rookie of the Year on the power of a promise he made after the death of his mother. He swore an oath to become the best in the world no matter what it took to get there. The path to two World Series championships included pumping his body up with steroids, which were not specifically banned by the league when he started using them.

Canseco's biggest fault may be that he is not a hypocrite. When he was asked by a congressional committee about his PED use, he answered directly and fully. Some other players on the panel proved to be hiding their truth.

He came clean in a shocking book published in 2005, "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big." The names he named included some of the biggest in baseball at the time, including home run slugger and Oakland A's teammate Mark McGuire.

This video is the CBS "60 Minutes" story about Canseco and "Juiced."

Although he still had his his baseball skills and he was in prime physical condition, Canseco said he was blackballed by Major League Baseball after the book was published. Other players who weren't forthcoming were allowed back in as coaches.

About the author:

Editor-in-Chief Alan Duke co-founded Lead Stories after ending a 26-year career with CNN, where he mainly covered entertainment, current affairs and politics. Duke closely covered domestic terrorism cases for CNN, including the Oklahoma City federal building bombing, the UNABOMBER and search for Southeast bomber Eric Robert Rudolph. CNN moved Duke to Los Angeles in 2009 to cover the entertainment beat. Duke also co-hosted a daily podcast with former HLN host Nancy Grace, "Crime Stories with Nancy Grace" and hosted the podcast series "Stan Lee's World: His Real Life Battle with Heroes & Villains." You'll also see Duke in many news documentaries, including on the Reelz channel, CNN and HLN.

Read more about or contact Alan Duke