Juiced

AdamBa (Adam Barr) writes "Juiced is not a great book. The writing is workmanlike but not particularly entertaining, none of the stories are more than slightly amusing, and its protagonist projects an unappealing mixture of vanity and whining. There is a bit of dirt on players, and a couple of nuggets about Madonna and the sex lives of baseball players (and the intersection of those two), but as a baseball autobiography, it pales besides better competition. And yet, Juiced may be one of the most important baseball books ever written." Specifically, the book provides an insider's account of one aspect of biotech that has achieved widespread use, if not acceptance. Read on for the rest of Barr's review.

Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big.
author	Jose Canseco
pages	290
publisher	Regan Books
rating	6
reviewer	Adam Barr
ISBN	0060746408
summary	Canseco used steroids and maybe we should too.

Canseco, for those who spent the last 15 years hidden under a rock, played major league baseball for 17 seasons, from 1985 to 2001. He was most famous for belting massive home runs, but he was also pretty fast: in 1988 he became the first player in history to hit at least 40 home runs and steal at least 40 bases in a single season. For his career he hit .266, with 462 home runs and a .515 slugging percentage. He was a 6-time All-Star, won a Rookie-of-the-Year and MVP award, and picked up two World Series rings.

(How good was Canseco as a player? In his book Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?, Bill James presents several methods of estimating how likely someone is to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. On the "Hall of Fame Standards" test, where 60 percent of players with a score of 40-49 have gotten into the Hall of Fame, Canseco scores a 38. On the "Hall of Fame Monitor" test, where a score of 100 indicates someone is likely to get in, Canseco scores an 103. So Canseco may not get elected to the Hall of Fame (and likely won't, after the publication of his book), but a reasonable case could be made that he belongs there. The answer to the question of how good Canseco was is "very, very good.")

What's important about Juiced, especially to the average Slashdot reader who may not know a baseball diamond from the Hope diamond? The answer is buried in the subtitle's heap of verbiage: "Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big." Canseco's book is about the growing user of steroids in baseball, something you hear a lot about today. But Canseco has an unusual opinion: steroids in baseball are not bad; in fact they are very, very good.

Spurred in large part by Canseco's book, the U.S. House Government Reforms Committee subpoenaed some of the biggest names in baseball -- including Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, and Sammy Sosa -- to testify at a hearing on March 17. Allegations are flying that Barry Bonds was on steroids when he set the single-season mark of 73 home runs in 2001. The typical press reaction to this is one of disgust: words such as "tainted," "artificial," and "cheating" are common.

Not so fast, says Canseco. Steroids in baseball are good. Steroids help players get stronger, and enjoy longer careers. And it's not just baseball players who can benefit: steroids can help almost anyone live a longer, healthier life. His book is a wakeup call not just for baseball, or sports in general, but for all mankind. That's his view, anyway, but he makes a decent case for it, using himself as an example.

Canseco explains how he used steroids (which in this context really means a combination of steroids and human growth hormone) to transform himself from a skinny kid to the beefed up example of manhood that gazes soulfully at you from above a bulging bicep on the back cover of his book. He gained confidence as well, and there's no doubt his ego was pumped up: the book is full of references to how good-looking he is, with some attempts to balance those with descriptions of how ugly he was as a kid.

The book also has a B storyline, which is that the media discriminated against Canseco because he is Cuban, in comparison to the All-American image of Mark McGwire. The current media dismissal of Canseco's claims that McGwire took steroids only adds fuel to his conspiracy theory. If you read the book, you would be hard-pressed to doubt that McGwire took steroids on a regular basis. Canseco is not describing rumor or innuendo; he is talking about obtaining steroids and then personally sticking a needle containing them into McGwire's gluteus maximus, repeatedly, over a period of years when they were both with the Oakland A's, and then later injecting his Texas Ranger teammates Rafael Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez, and Ivan Rodriguez.

A glance at the rookie cards of players like McGwire and Barry Bonds shows that those guys have put on a lot of muscle since they reached the majors (rookie cards are a good source of pictures since a hitter with no action photos from major-league games usually gets the basic pose of bent elbow, bat over shoulder). A Giambi minor-league card shows a lot of loose sleeve around the bicep. If Canseco is making all this up, he is doing an excellent job, and the fact that nobody is threatening to sue him over the book lends credence to the accuracy of his claims.

Remember, Canseco is not "accusing" anyone of using steroids, in the usual negative sense of an accusation. He is merely stating that people used them, and in fact applauds them, considering it a wise decision both medically and financially. Unlike almost every other media report, Canseco's book discusses steroid use in a factual way, absent the finger-pointing and hand-wringing. He presents steroid users not as cheaters, but as vanguards of a new era of athletic performance.

So how should a libertarian, "I'll believe it when I see it" cynic view the accomplishments of juiced-up baseball players? People are talking about asterisks on records, Hall of Fame bans, revoking MVP awards. Is this reasonable?

It's a fact that in sports where achievement is measured in objective terms, athletes today are much better than they used to be. Yet in sports where opinions are subjective, the older athletes are usually recalled as being better than their modern counterparts. In 1920, the year that Babe Ruth began hitting home runs at a previously unprecedented pace, the world record for the mile was 4 minutes, 12.6 seconds; today it is 3 minutes, 43.13 seconds. That doesn't sound like a huge difference, but if you picture the race as four laps of a quarter-mile oval, as it is usually run, the modern miler would finish almost half a lap ahead of his 1920 counterpart, an obviously dominating victory. Today a good college runner can run the mile faster than the 1920 world-record-holder. It would seem logical to assume that a good college hitter (a good college power hitter, anyway), if magically transported back to 1920, could hit more home runs than Babe Ruth.

Almost any baseball analyst today would laugh at that notion. I think they are wrong; I think a modern hitter, or pitcher, would in fact completely dominate their counterparts from early in the last century (even if you let the pitchers throw spitballs, which have now been banned from baseball, yet their erstwhile practitioners are considered crafty, not cheaters, and their statistics remain unblemished by any asterisks). It's documented that pitchers of yore could mostly take it easy out on the mound. In books like Christy Mathewson's Pitching in a Pinch, it was explained that pitchers could save their energy for the dozen or so times in a game that they really had to bear down.

I'm not saying that Babe Ruth or Christy Mathewson, if born today, could not become great major-league players. They obviously had natural talents that separated them from their peers. What they were lacking was all the knowledge that has been built up over the years. It's not just diet and conditioning -- it's all the miracles of modern life that keep us going. Even up to the 1970s, pitchers could never see video of themselves pitching (a huge advantage in correcting flaws in their pitching motion) unless they happened to pitch in the World Series. Jose Canseco had surgery three times for back injuries, any one of which presumably would have ended, or severely curtailed, his career 85 years ago, yet nobody accuses him of cheating for undergoing surgery.

One of the miracles of modern baseball medicine is "Tommy John surgery", named after the pitcher on whom it was first performed. It involves repairing the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow using a ligament from another part of the body. A pitcher who undergoes this surgery is not only avoiding a career-ending injury (the linked article above says that Sandy Koufax, who retired due to a self-described "dead arm," is thought to have had damaged UCL). The surgery usually leaves the elbow stronger than it was before. And more than 10% of major-league pitchers today have had this surgery. Are they cheating? Do they need an asterisk next to their records? There is no doubt that in the near future, athletes will undergo surgery not to repair injuries, but to prevent injuries that have not yet occurred. One day athletes with artificial limbs will be relegated to their own Olympics not because they perform worse than their non-bionic counterparts, but because they perform better.

The Olympics, of course, have taken a hard line on pharmaceuticals: popping a Sudafed before the big event will disqualify you. Nobody is suggesting that baseball go that far, but what is the dividing line between steroids and a lot of other substances that athletes put in their bodies? As Jim Bouton points out in his classic book Ball Four, baseball players have long been searching for that extra chemical edge. His diary of the 1969 Seattle Pilots describes rampant use of "greenies," or amphetamines. Bouton expounds further on this topic:

"I've tried a lot of other things through the years -- like butazolidin, which is what they give to horses. And D.M.S.O. -- dimethyl suloxide. Whitey Ford used that for a while. You rub it on with a plastic glove and as soon as it gets in your arm you can taste it in your mouth. It's not available anymore, though. Word is it can blind you. I've also taken shots -- novocain, cortisone, and xylocaine. Baseball players will take anything. If you had a pill that would guarantee a pitcher 20 wins but might take five years off his life, he'd take it."

The issue with steroids, of course, is that they really work. They're not magic: you still have to work out, hard. But you do get stronger, and according to Canseco, even more important is the increased stamina, the ability to hit as well at the end of a 6-month season as you do at the beginning. Canseco also points out that baseball players used to be known for drinking and recreational drug use. But a steroid-user can't afford to tax their liver with alcohol and drugs, and they don't need to mess around with greenies, so Canseco feels that the arrival of steroids also ushered in a time of "clean living" among baseball players.

Canseco presents himself as "The Chemist," the one who did the experiments with steroids, learned how to use them properly, and then passed his knowledge on to others. He maintains that he taught McGwire in Oakland, then Palmeiro, Gonzalez and Rodriguez in Texas (and that McGwire taught Giambi), and when Canseco returned to Oakland, he taught Miguel Tejada. Canseco views the $72-million, 6-year contract that Tejada signed with Baltimore in December 2003 as proof that Tejada made a wise decision to increase his physical ability (although Canseco adds a disclaimer in this case: although he claims to have taught Tejada about steroids and saw him grow bigger and stronger, he did not actually witness Tejada using steroids).

Fans, of course, do love home runs. I saw a baseball game in St. Louis in 1999, and I have never seen an audience so clearly devoted to a single player. The only jersey you saw in the stands was Mark McGwire's number 25. The fans loved him, and the place came alive when he was batting. And when, mirabile dictu, he cranked a four-bagger over the left-field fence, the place went nuts, and I bet every fan felt they got their money's worth. What about those kids, the ones in the stands, when McGwire is revealed to have feet of clay?

Canseco has an answer: we shouldn't worry about those kids having fallen heroes, because in his eyes, they aren't fallen. Furthermore, he accuses baseball's owners and management of being complicit in trying to hush up steroid use, in order to give the fans what they wanted.

Juiced, as mentioned earlier, has problems. Canseco states that young athletes should not use steroids, but beyond a blanket disclaimer at the beginning of the book, does little to discourage teenagers from attempting to emulate the professionals. He gives an unsurprisingly sympathetic and glossy account of his various run-ins with the law: gun possession charge, a couple of domestic violence cases, a bar fight, three months in jail in 2003. He tosses around the names of various steroids, but for someone who claims to know so much about the subject, he gives little background on them: how they were discovered, the legal uses for which they are manufactured, how suppliers obtain them.

But as background reading for today's steroids controversy, and as a potential harbinger of the future of our species, it's worth a look.

---

You can purchase Juiced from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Drugs = Biotech?

[null etc.]

Specifically, the book provides an insider's account of one aspect of biotech that has achieved widespread use, if not acceptance.

Uhm, yeah. Steroids are "biotech". Nice justification for submitting a baseball story review to /.

So how should a libertarian...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like drugs in baseball, stop watching it on TV, and paying for tickets until they come up with a policy that the fans demand. I hate the sport and only participate in its business to the extent the state demands (ridiculous taxpayer funding, etc). The government should have NO ROLE in this. They will but they shouldn't. That doesn't stop them from the myriad areas where they get involved with no business. Much like Terri Schiavo. There will always be some lobby somewhere for some government involvement everywhere. And government from the left and the right will honor this desire in different areas. This is precisely why our constitutionally-limited government is turning into mob rule democracy.

Our Fearless Leaders at Work

[Brandybuck]

Am I the only one who thinks Congress's priorities are completely out of whack? Aren't there more important things they could be focusing on? Sheesh.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Deal.

[Mr. Underbridge]

Uhm, yeah. Steroids are "biotech". Nice justification for submitting a baseball story review to /.

And we sports fans put up with similar lame justifications for submitting a story about the latest inane Star Trek/Wars spinoff/episode/whatever. So deal with it.

Regardless of the merits of the Congressional focus on baseball, it's a whole lot more newsworthy than the usual popular media related drivel on slashdot.

Bush, Steroids and smokescreens

[dameron]

Bush mentioned baseball and steroids in his State of the Union a couple of years ago. At the time I thought "Huh, thats seems incongruous." but now I'm starting to see why he did it.

This baseball steroid issue is a great smokescreen to distract the media from several much more important stories:

1) Jeff Gannon - gay prostitute/republican media plant gains access to Whitehouse without security clearance, the second gay hooker security controversy in as many Bush administrations

2) Propaganda - Whitehouse pre-packaging new stories for anonymous airing, secretly hiring pundits like Armstrong Williams to advocate policy, coordinating political coverage with Roger Ailes at Fox news

3) Iraqi Corruption - Who walked off with $9,000,000,000 in cash?

4) Political Appointments - Karen Hughes (no experience) at State, Bolton to the U.N., Wolfowitz to the Wold Bank

The whole world is talking about steroids in baseball and it's hardly an important issue. That W. staked out this political cover years ago is a testament to Karl Rove's genius.

evil bastard,

-dameron

consider the source?

[bad_outlook]

with all the talk of this, you have to consider the source. Now while Jose does want to sell books (and this controversey has done that) would he really lie about SO MUCH that he claims has happened? I mean really, one or two it'd be hard to believe, but with all the allegations, I find it hard that no one is buying it. Heck, even 'big mac' didn't deny anything. The cat is outta the bag IMO. bo

quote

[Dante]

"Baseball players will take anything. If you had a pill that would guarantee a pitcher 20 wins but might take five years off his life, he'd take it."

I had to ask myself, if I could take a pill that increased my IQ by 60 points, but might take five years off my life would I take it?

Yep.

Sports = Entertainment

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark Maguire shooting steroids shouldn't cause any more or less of a stir than Jack Nicholson snorting a big ol' bag of coke.

Are they both entertaining to the people who like sports/Nicholson movies? Yes. Okay, then there's no negative impact on the industry.

Sure, there's the "role model" factor. But in that case, players taking steroids is EXACTLY as bad as actresses who starve themselves. Young people attempting to emulate both will end up hurting themselves.

Also, the "role model" factor goes out beyond the entertainment industry, to any public figure. We've had two Presidents in a row who have used drugs. We've had two Presidents in a row who dodged the draft. I really doubt the feds would really want to get deeply involved enough in this issue to have to consider what that might be telling kids.

People think athletes are something different than entertainers. They're not. They might sweat more, but they deliver the same value to society.

Re:Am I missing something

[genomancer]

Yeah, you're missing something. You're missing the fact that "Technology" no longer means "Silicon" or "Ray guns". Technology is becoming less about metals and electrons and more about proteins and chemistry every day. Hell, even your aforementioned Sci-Fi writers have known this for decades; from Niven to Gibson and back to Heinlein, the masters have long known that once we've reached the boundaries of hard tech, soft tech will dominate. If you haven't realised that it's already happening, either catch up or get out of the way.

As such, the social issues of "new technology" ARE what "Nerds and Geeks and Libertarians" should be thinking about... and while Canseco is no genius philospher, he appears to have guts and some degree of vision. His stance is important, if not correct or wise. This article is more about "tommorow's technology today" than any other I've seen on Slashdot in recent memory.

G

Re:This book is nothing but lies

[Otter]

C'mon -- a handful of chronological errors hardly qualify as "lies". It's not as if I have complete faith in the guy's credility but the stuff you're citing is pretty petty.

For example, did he not pitch-hit against David Cone in 2000? Or was it just in Game 4, not 6?

Maybe you're poking some tiny holes in his accuracy, but even if he's confused about some at-bat against Walt Terrell 20 years ago, I can still believe he remembers whether he did or did not inject steroids into Mark McGwire's ass.

showboating bitches, EAT MY COCK!

[Thud457]

Yeah, like Congress should be wasting its time investigating the mismanagement of a game by a monopolistic system they rubber-stamped in the first place.

It's not like there's more important issues to delve into currently.

I'm sure Eliott Spitzer has time to add investigations on the abuses carried out in the name of "Teh war on tERROR" along with Tycho, Worldcom, Enron and George II's plan to destroy social security and medicare (actually, that's his brother -- so far).

Baseball IS for nerds..

[CynicalGuy]

What's with all the anti-baseball comments? Out of any sport, baseball is probably the nerdiest one, since it is ALL about statistics. Who to put in as pitcher, what pitches to throw, who to walk, how to arrange your batting lineup, etc etc. It's certainly not a sport with a lot of action in it. The real strategy involves probability and math, I would say even more so than a game like poker. You can see why the athletes will do anything, including steroids, just to raise their stats by a few points...

Re:Deal.

[TheFlyingGoat]

Damn straight. What most Slashdoters don't realize is that far more science and technology goes into most sports than any of their favorite TV shows. A few examples:
- golf ball dimple patterns (planned using computer simulations)
- baseball bat swing motion (motion tracking and computer analysis is used in the pros)
- football game planning (teams keep extensive stats that are used to find weaknesses in defenses)

That's just touching the surface, too. There's a LOT of really cool tech being used in sports these days.

Re:Deal.

[gl4ss]

*Regardless of the merits of the Congressional focus on baseball, it's a whole lot more newsworthy than the usual popular media related drivel on slashdot.*

that nicely sums up what's wrong with slashdot nowadays. users that want just MAINSTREAM NEWS THEY WOULD GET FROM THEIR NEWSPAPER.

slashdot is NEWS FOR NERDS. now, baseball isn't NEWS FOR NERDS. some geeky electric circuits project would have been, or some nice memoriable on computer gaming. but fucking book about baseball? no way.

Re:Huh?

[Azog]

Biotech.

If steriods are actually a good thing, as claimed in the book, maybe lots of people will start using them.

Maybe all sorts of other performance enhancing (not just physical, but mental performance enhancing drugs) will become both popular and actually legal.

Right now the only mental performance enhancing drug that is widely used and actually promoted by employers giving it free to employees is caffiene.

What if the coffee room in your workplace had not only coffee but a whole rack of various drugs which would make you better able to concentrate, work longer, even just smarter?

I'm a software developer, and if stuff like this was both safe (REALLY safe) and available I think I'd use it, especially during crunch time.

So that's why this review is on Slashdot. The attitude behind the book matters, even to non-sports-fan nerds.

A new name for "the rest of the world"?

[rsidd]

Canseco, for those who spent the last 15 years hidden under a rock, played major league baseball

I suppose that's American for "those who don't live in baseball-speaking countries"?

I mean, there are more countries that play cricket at the top level than baseball. And an order of magnitude more people who follow it.

Re:Deal.

[Mr. Underbridge]

slashdot is NEWS FOR NERDS. now, baseball isn't NEWS FOR NERDS.

I'm a nerd. I like baseball. I'm not the only one. QED.

And if you want to maintain that lofty standard, then /. should stop accepting stories about Buffy.

Re:quote

[smoker2]

I had to ask myself, if I could take a pill that increased my IQ by 60 points, but might take five years off my life would I take it?

And with your IQ so increased, you might understand that it wasn't worth five years off your life ?

Well-written

[Angst Badger]

I've got two observations to make here. Firstly, this article's claim to belong on Slashdot is tenuous at best. If simply using pharmaceuticals makes this a biotech story, we are in for an awful lot of biotech stories, mostly involving Courtney Love.

And secondly, despite that, this is one of the best-written articles to appear on Slashdot in some time. It smacks of actual journalism, which isn't something that happens often here.

Re:Our Fearless Leaders at Work

[GeckoX]

(1) Baseball is exempt from some anti-trust laws. For example, Major League Baseball (MLB) gets to decide how many teams there are and more importantly, where those teams are located. There are very densely populated parts of this country that have no chance in getting a baseball team because MLB says no. No one can override MLB's decision because MLB is free to run their shop and determine the economical competitiveness of their own decisions without worrying about someone else stepping in to compete. They are a congressionally protected monopoly.

What? You're on crack. MLB is a business entity. MLB does most certainly NOT control all of baseball. You are more than welcome to start up a competing league and put teams wherever the hell you choose.

For more info on this, I strongly encourage you to read up on the history of the MLB itself. There were at one time two professional leagues in North America.

How congress has anything to do with this I don't know...maybe if I had my tin foil hat on...

(2) Tax payer dollars have subsidized something like 1/2 of the current major league stadiums. Yes it can bring revenue into the area, but MLB and team owners are the ones to most benefit from these added tax dollars because it reduces the financial burden on team owners.

Your point being? Subsidization to entice business is part of business as usual my friend. Who cares if LA foots half the bill for the Dodgers. Don't like your tax dollars spent that way? Vote differently then or move somewhere where they don't spend tax dollars on this kind of subsidization.

MLB is big business. It looks like big business, acts like it, walks and talks like it...go figure, it's treated like it too.

Doesn't change the fact that as with any business, if there is no demand for it, it won't exist for long. Obviously some people like baseball.

Re:Huh?

[robertjw]

If steriods are actually a good thing, as claimed in the book, maybe lots of people will start using them.

This may come as complete shock, but there are already LOTS of people using them. Next time you are at your local gym (or if you don't have a gym membership go get a free trial) look around. There is a limit to the size and shape most people can acquire naturally and the odds are good that some of the people in your local gym didn't acquire their size and shape naturally. Most competitive (not professional, competitive )bodybuilders use juice, they have to to compete. Heck, when I was in high school in the late 80's I knew guys doing steriods, granted the laws were much more lax, but it was still socially unacceptable.

I agree completely with the rest of your statement. If there are things that are available that will make me bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, whatever and are reasonably safe, why are we not researching these and making them available to the public.

Re:Our Fearless Leaders at Work

[dr_canak]

"Just because your employer (the MLB club owners) benefits from being exempt from some regulation does not make it OK for Congress to start sticking its nose into how you, the employee, do your job."

I'm not sure I understand this. MLB is under scrutiny by congress. Not the players themselves. Congress subpoened players to hear from line level personnel what kind of steroid problems exist in MLB. They weren't after the players. If every player on that panel had admitted to steroid use, the congressional panel would have done nothing to them other than thank them for their honesty. Legally, the players might have been in trouble for using an illicit substance, but that wasn't the focus of the hearings that took place.

"Under such reasoning, it would be OK to subpoena journalist's drug tests because the newspapers that employ them enjoy exemptions from campaign-finance regulations or media-ownership rules."

Now with what I said above, it would be o.k. if the journalists signed a contract with their newspaper publisher that held them to a certain level of accountability.

I work for the federal goverment and we enjoy some serious tax breaks ;-). I signed a contract that allows them to test me for illicit substances whenever they see fit, and they can fire me on the spot for a dirty test.

MLB players are contracted employees of team owners and MLB through the collective bargaining agreement. I have no idea what the content of that thing is, but there are certain rules above and beyond the contract a player signs with a team to which they are accountable. The players union negotiated that contract with MLB. If the players signed that agreement and accept accountability for this, then they should be held accountable.

jeff

Wrong!

[Sloppy]

You are wrong. This is a technological issue, and now that the federal government is starting to act like it wants to interfere (that's what really put it into the limelight), it's going to be a political issue too. Transhumanism goes way beyond sports.

How are you going to like it when you want to inject some longevity nanobots or install cybereyes, and you're not allowed to, because the government has declared you're not allowed to modify your body as you please?

Baseball nerds

[DrSbaitso]

Many of us hang out at baseballthinkfactory.org. However, most people who post there have played a lot of ball; I would say the average proficiency is high school, but I don't know for sure. Certainly, we're not very good (compared with the players we follow, at least), but it's probably unfair to say we've never picked up a bat or ball our entire lives. Certainly a much more athletic crowd than the one here, judging by the reaction that this and any other athletic-related thread gets.