posted on Mar, 8 2006 @ 07:28 PM
I wonder what Ken Caminiti's widow and children think about Canseco's thesis concerning the benefits of steroids.
You know, I and a lot of others at this site have ragged on McGwire, for the obvious phoniness of his transmogrifying himself from a very tall and
fairly strong slugger into a circus strongman freak, and for his pathetic refusal to "discuss the past" in front of Congress.
But give McGwire this much: When he found out high school and junior high school kids were using the same cr@p he'd been using, and when he found out
about its potential medical consequences for those kids, he very publicly stopped using at least that substance, and just as publicly urged all kids
who'd been emulating him to KNOCK IT OFF IMMEDIATELY.
That doesn't make him a legitimate Hall of Famer, and I personally will never accept him as such.
But I surely give him a lot of credit for what he did there, for the sake of kids who were harming themselves as a result of his bad example. It
reminds me of Mickey Mantle, in the final 2 or 3 months of his life in 1995, when he told kids not to follow his example about lifestyle, and added
that he was a "terrible example," as his liver slowly took his life. I wish the Babe had done the same over the 2+ years it took for his throat
cancer to kill him.
As you suggest, IA Clonz, Canseco has done exactly the opposite. And since this book has almost certainly been translated into Spanish, there is no
way of knowing how many tens of millions of kids in both North AND SOUTH America he has hurt in the process.
It gives a whole new breadth of meaning to "selling one's soul to the Devil," doesn't it?
B.H.N.