Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and The Battle to Save Baseball
Jose Canseco has always been a larger than life personality. Even before he became the self-proclaimed “Godfather Of Steroids,” he was always picking fights with fans, writers and the establishment of Major League Baseball. But now that steroids have become front-page news on an almost daily basis, Canseco’s name has become synonymous with scandal, thanks to his first book, Juiced. But there’s only one problem with Jose’ new book, Vindicated: The one person who thinks he’s the biggest thing to happen to baseball is…Jose Canseco.
The way Jose Canseco writes in Vindicated makes him sound like the local loudmouth at the sports bar doing commentary while the Mitchell Report hearings are on the TV over his head. Instead of breaking news, like in Juiced, Canseco is reduced to giving you his opinion how everyone else is doing after he kicked the door in on the bathroom stall revealing steroids to the world. In his words, he was only doing a service to the game he loves, but after 200 pages of him patting himself on the back, he seemed to be only doing a service to his agent to get him another book deal.
In a stunt that Michael Moore would appreciate, an entire chapter is dedicated to Canseco subjecting himself to a lie detector test (twice) to prove that what he has previously said about Mark McGwire, Ivan Rodriquez, and Rafael Palmiero, as if this will prove once and for all he doesn’t have an ax to grind. Of course, in a Jose Canseco book, with a Jose Canseco-funded test, you can probably guess what the result of this test is. For a bit that was supposed to sell my on Canseco’s truthfulness, I actually believed him less after reading about the test. Why? Because it seemed like such an elaborate stunt for someone to pull to prove himself to the average reader. For me, the only thing is showed was that he was trying at some point to sell the videotape of him taking the test.
But there is one highlight in Vindicated, and that’s when Alex “A-Rod” Rodriguez makes an appearance. Canseco says he held back trashing A-Rod in his last book because it would seem like he was out to get him personally. He follows this up by saying A-Rod is in the book “because I hate his fucking guts.” Canseco seems angrier about A-Rod allegedly putting the moves on his wife than if the alleged steroids Rodriguez was taking had an effect on baseball. Wait, I though this was about “the game I love?” Canseco is smart enough to cover his ass by saying he only introduced a guy who could have sold A-Rod some stuff, then includes photos and stats of Rodriguez before and after this alleged meeting, to prove what effect he had on the future Hall-Of-Famer’s career, which gets to the heart of the problem of the book.
While there is no doubt that Juiced will be considered one of the most important baseball books published, because of the information inside, as well as the motives behind it, Vindicated which not reach such a status. This book will be remembered for how great a person Jose Canseco is, and not because of its content, but because Jose Canseco spent hundreds of pages telling me so.
