Watch our Facebook Live interview with Jose Canseco on the Lead Stories Facebook page here!
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.
