`I`Ve GoT noTHInG LeFT`

‘ I’Ve GoT
noTHInG LeFT’
former slugger
Broke. Alone. Filled with regret. The erything.
explains how it feels to lose ev
VEGAS
BY KRISTINA RUTHERFORD IN LAS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY SIAN KENNEDY
J
42 SPORTSNET
PHoTo cReDIT TK
MONEY MADE IN THE BIG LEAGUES: More than $45 million
MONEY HE HAS LEFT: Owes $1.1 million to the IRS
WORLD SERIES RINGS: Two
NICKNAMES: Bash Brother, The Godfather of Steroids, The Chemist
BEST BLOOPER: Ball bounces off his head and over the wall in Cleveland for a homer
ARRESTS: Four
MMA RECORD: 0-1, knocked out at 1:17 by Choi Hong-man
GO-TO TWEETS: I complete U, Hug 4 U, Slap a hater
SIZE OF HIS RIGHT BICEP: Unknown—“There’s only one thing men really measure”
PHoTo cReDIT TK
His golf
course just outside Las Vegas.
er on the third hole of a ritzy golf
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on, just a little noise, ‘I’m coming,
SPORTSNET 43
money canseco
There are tears in my eyes from laughter.
I’m shaking my head, no. “Pretend, for me.”
Still, nothing. On the fourth hole, the business idea strikes: Canseco wants to turn
my fake orgasm noise into a bestselling
99-cent ringtone. “Who wouldn’t buy
that?” he asks, grinning. “It would sell like
crazy.” It takes his golf buddies several
minutes to regain their composure enough
to tee off.
Meet Jose Canseco, an immature, crowdpleasing adolescent stuck in the body of a
larger-than-life 47-year-old former professional ballplayer. It has been at least 12
years since the ex-Bash Brother let a
reporter spend time with him, see his
house and experience a day in his life. He’d
almost cancelled this visit as well, saying
he’s been the subject of too many hatchet
jobs. Canseco tried to scare me into staying
home: “I’m the Big Bad Wolf of Baseball!”
In the end, he agreed to the interview with
this sound reasoning: “You sounded cute.”
The man who emerges is at times the
one you’d expect: arrogant, crass and
wildly entertaining, the personality that
makes Canseco an online sensation whose
Twitter tirades land him in the news on a
regular basis. A sample: “Hole families
used to sleep in one big bed and produce
no waste how did we go from their to killing polar bears in 100 years [sic]” and
“Girls don’t hate me they masturbate to
me.” But Canseco is full of surprises and
contradictions. He isn’t stupid or crazy,
despite what his misspelled rants suggest.
At the heart of it, Canseco is honest, he’s
endearing, he’s likeable, even kind. He’s
also sad and lonely.
Eleven years removed from Major League
Baseball, his millions squandered, Canseco’s life has been ruined by the sport that
is his obsession. And all he wants is another
shot. If he hadn’t written that tell-all book
on steroids, he swears he’d still be in the
big leagues hitting home runs instead of
exiled from the game he loves. Canseco’s
finances are a mess, he has only one true
friend, and his relationships with the only
people he cares about—his family—have
paid the price while he chases the comeback dream. His teenaged daughter, Josie,
is the love of his life and they don’t even
live in the same city. Canseco still looks
and acts the part of a rich athlete, but it’s
a facade. He prefers quiet and privacy, but
the man he presents to the world is loud
and crazy because that’s what sells. Money
is his Achilles heel; it drives nearly every
decision he makes, and he can be downright mean in pursuit of it. Because if Canseco could get that lavish lifestyle back,
maybe losing baseball wouldn’t hurt so
bad. He is no longer rich, but still famous.
He’s no longer a baseball star, just a hasbeen chasing a comeback he knows is
impossible. He says he’s happy, but it
doesn’t seem that way.
44 SPORTSNET
canseco money
larGer tHan life Jose Canseco’s python-sized arms are legendary—the product of steroids, some
say, though Canseco insists he’s a genetic freak even without drugs. Also legendary? His ostentatious
lifestyle, which by now is more illusion than reality, a facade Canseco works hard to preserve.
Nothing can prepare a person for the sight
of Jose Canseco. He gets out of his white
Cadillac and his bronzed, six-foot-four, 260lb. frame dwarfs the car. His biceps are
punishing the sleeves of a white Nike golf
shirt that wasn’t designed to house anything this big. A Bluetooth earpiece hangs
off his right ear. He extends his bear paw–
sized hand for a shake and smiles to reveal
sparkling white teeth. Canseco’s arms and
legs are hairless and his lips are glossy from
the cherry Lypsyl he’s constantly applying.
He’s in black golf shorts, white tube socks
and black sandals, and everything about
him screams pro athlete. Only the stiff walk,
the wrinkles around the eyes and the grey
hair in his no-signs-of-receding-coif betray
that the glory days are long gone, that he
hit the last of his 462 big league home runs
11 years ago.
Canseco opens the front door to his fivebedroom home, located about eight miles
from the strip, and a naked woman (a statue)
greets us in the entrance. The marble
hallway leads to a large living room dominated by a 74-inch TV that Canseco rarely
watches, plus two more naked ladies, an
eagle and two elephants (all statues). Canseco squeezes himself into a gold-tinged
chair, and a giant 130-lb., blue-grey dog
named Bruce—part Weimaraner, part Great
Dane—settles on the carpet at his feet. Bruce
is the dog Canseco calls “humble”—the only
Canseco in the place who fits that description. In a carpeted room off the kitchen, two
tiny dogs, each wearing a “World’s No. 1
Dog” sweater, yap behind closed doors, their
food scattered on the floor. They belong to
a woman whose Mercedes is parked outside,
though she’s never here and Canseco never
mentions her name except to call her “the
other girl.” She’s a friend of his recent exgirlfriend, 25-year-old model Leila Shennib.
Then a guy you’d definitely want on your
side in a fight walks through. His name is
Donnie, and he’s another friend of the exgirlfriend. Donnie lives upstairs, across the
hall from Canseco’s nephew, Frank Alfonso,
an Orlando-based artist who’s living here
while he paints a mural for a poker player.
Canseco welcomes anyone visiting to go on
a self-guided tour, but the master bedroom
is off limits. “Dead bodies,” he explains,
smiling. “Welcome to the party house.” Mike
Tyson and a tiger could parade through and
nobody would flinch.
But this “party house” is all about appearances. Canseco, it turns out, doesn’t like to
party. The bottles of booze on the kitchen
counter don’t belong to him, because he
doesn’t drink. He claims he hasn’t been
drunk or high since he was 19. One bad trip
on cocaine was enough. He rarely goes to
clubs because it’s a hassle. Drunk guys
always want to fight him, then ask for his
autograph. Canseco may live in Vegas, but
he doesn’t live the Vegas life. If it’s not working out, baseball, golf, poker or eating, he’s
not interested. Celebrity appearances aren’t
fun—they pay the bills. Later, a man walking his dog sees Canseco on his front lawn
posing for a photo shoot. “What a life,” the
man says, smiling. “It’s not a good one,”
Canseco answers. “Believe me.”
You can’t blame him for making assumptuions, though: Canseco rents a five-bedroom, 5,000-sq. ft. home in a gated community for $2,800 a month and he leases a
Cadillac. When he goes to the casino, he
springs for valet parking. He goes out of his
way to look the part of a rich man, though
only the shell remains. Canseco makes his
money through celebrity work he describes
as feast or famine. He won’t say how much
he expects to make this year, except that
he’s “comfortable, for a regular person.”
Several times Canseco reminds me he usually charges for exclusive interviews. He
promises to bill $10,000 next time and insists
I buy him dinner. “You have an expense
account, right?” he asks, as we walk up to
the restaurant. “I’m bringing lobster home
in my pockets.”
Canseco earned more than $45 million
playing professional baseball and he isn’t
ashamed to admit there’s nothing left, that
he plans to file for bankruptcy this year
because he still owes the IRS $1.1 million.
The founding member of baseball’s 40-40
club (40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in
1988, even if Canseco jokes it’s 40 women
in 40 nights) finds it ridiculous when it’s suggested he should have money in the bank.
The $23.5-million contract he signed with
the Oakland A’s in 1990 made him baseball’s
highest-paid player ever. Here’s how Canseco, sitting in his living room, legs crossed,
breaks down the math on that contract: 40
percent went to taxes. His divorce to ex-wife
No. 1, Esther Haddad, cost him $6 million
and two six-figure sports cars. “Divorce
and taxes alone are devastating,” he says.
“Women are expensive.” He never figures
in the other 10 sports cars he owned, or
divorce No. 2. Instead, Canseco brings up
family and the stock market. “What do you
have left?” he asks. His right arm is in the
air, and his thumb and index finger are joined
together to form a big fat zero.
Canseco is forever trying to get it all back.
His phone rings at least 10 times a day, and
it’s always business-related. Over two days,
he agrees to a celebrity boxing match, works
through a baseball contract, hawks his antiaging drink, “I Complete You,” tries to sell
a sports radio show and works out the next
taping of Hollywood Exes, a reality show
with his daughter and ex-wife No. 2 (Jessica
Sekely was a Hooters waitress and he
couldn’t resist those orange shorts). It’s nonstop, and Canseco never says no, only asks
how much. He wishes he’d agreed to shoot
a porno when the $1-million offer was on
the table eight years ago. These days, Twitter is Canseco’s means of attracting attention. He plots a Twitter death and decides
he’ll tweet that he was found dead in a
bathtub with 14 penguins, then reconsiders.
“That’s too many. Two penguins is more
realistic.” Canseco revels in the response
he gets—one “hater” calls him a “dipshit,”
another asks if he laces his steroids with
heroin. “People take it seriously,” he says.
“They’re all going, ‘He needs help! He’s
going to commit suicide!’” The latest business goal is to get his more than 469,000
Twitter followers hooked on a Jose Canseco
paysite that’s in the works. He’ll be wearing
a camera eight hours a day so his fans and
critics can communicate with him directly.
“They want to see me. They want to say,
‘You’re the greatest,’ or ‘You’re an asshole,’
or they just want to motherf--k me,” Canseco
says. “I’ll taunt them.” These ideas come
from a man who claims he doesn’t like attention, or entertaining. “I like getting paid for
entertaining,” Canseco explains. He’s wearing a hat that says “Trust Me” on it. “Why
not create the perception about me that’s
not me? It sells more and it’s more interesting to people. Who I really am is irrelevant.
To baseball, I’m the Big Bad Wolf. To my
family, I’m a nice, family guy. So, who do
you believe?”
A point for the former: It’s day two, and
we’re wearing out our welcome. Canseco
is doing his best to look unimpressed while
a camera flashes in his face, the photographer behind it trying to convince an unwilling model to pose under the lights he’s set
up in the living room. The previous day,
Canseco was all smiles. “Wanna take a picture of my butt hole while you’re at it? Let
me shave it first!” Now, he’s had enough.
SPORTSNET 45
money canseco
friends and relations Canseco considers his
dog, Bruce, his “son.” And though his golf buddies
are trained to laugh at everything he says, most of
the time he struggles to remember their names.
He’s in a tight black tank top and black
shorts, his hair still wet from the shower he
took after batting practice. He looks like an
unhappy comic book superhero. When a
business partner arrives for an afternoon
meeting, Canseco agrees to continue the
photo shoot while they talk. But the photographer’s request that Canseco’s guest
move to the middle of the couch doesn’t go
over well. Canseco’s lips are tight, his eyes
are narrowed. “This is money,” Canseco
says, pointing at his guest. “You’re not
money. I’ll cut you out in a second. Unless
you guys are paying my bills, you have no
chance.” The photo shoot is over.
Canseco has spent time in jail. He’s faced
domestic abuse charges after purposely
crashing into his first wife’s car and pulling
wife No. 2’s hair. He’s earned a restraining
order, has even been busted carrying a fertility drug across the Mexico-U.S. border.
But among a mile-long list of regrets, No. 1
is writing that book—Juiced: Wild Times,
Rampant ’Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big. If he could do it over, Canseco
never would have exposed his steroid-using
former teammates. Surrounded by people,
he’ll loudly proclaim the 2005 bestseller
saved the game: “You f--king ignorant cavedwellers, how did I ruin baseball? Baseball
is the best game in the world right now
because of that goddamn book I wrote!”
Away from the crowd, he’s honest: “It
destroyed my life.” He got death threats,
was labelled a snitch and his family suffered. Canseco doesn’t regret educating
kids on steroids or exposing baseball’s big46 SPORTSNET
gest problem, but he never wanted to take
down guys like Jason Giambi and fellow
Bash Brother Mark McGwire. His publisher
refused his manuscript unless he named
names. Canseco was angry enough with
the game to do it. “I have to live with that,”
he says. The man who called himself “The
Godfather of Steroids,” who educated players on their use for nearly 20 years before
blowing the whistle, says he would have
quit cold turkey had anyone in baseball
asked. “They didn’t care,” Canseco says.
“It was ridiculous back then, and I paid the
price for it.”
He has no friends left from a life in baseball. Not one relationship, not after 17 years
in the big leagues with seven different
teams. Canseco says Juiced didn’t help but
he blames MLB, says he was “blackballed”
and forced to retire in 2002 after being cast
as the poster boy of the steroid era. “Major
League Baseball detached me from every
level because I told the truth,” he says.
“Nobody can touch me now.” At first, losing every friend in baseball bothered Canseco. He swears it doesn’t now. “I don’t
want them,” he says. But the pain in his
voice is unmistakable when he talks about
former friends like Roger Clemens and Walt
Weiss. He hasn’t spoken to either in more
than a decade.
Losing the game hurts most. Canseco
never retired on his own terms, and aside
from the deaths of his parents, he counts
his big league exile as his life’s greatest
tragedy. It still gives him nightmares. Canseco makes a mockery of himself begging
for write-in all-star votes and desperately
offering free DH services to every team,
even though he knows his efforts are in
vain. “Pete Rose hasn’t been inducted into
the Hall of Fame, [and] what I did against
Major League Baseball is 1,000 times worse,
maybe 4,000 times worse. The comeback
is not going to happen,” he says. “But I still
have hope.”
His sales pitch is perfected, and he’ll dish
it out to anyone with ears: He may be old,
but he can still crush a baseball more than
550 feet. He still has one more season of
Major League Baseball in him, maybe two.
He’d hit 40 homers this year if a team gave
him a shot. “I’m going to be 48 years old,
and when you see me hit a baseball, you’re
gonna freak out,” Canseco says. “I have more
bat speed than almost anybody in the big
leagues.” The Godfather’s new message is
that steroids are overrated, and he would
have been a six-time all-star without them.
Canseco says the 46 bombs he hit with the
Toronto Blue Jays in 1998 were sans juice.
He was going through a divorce with Sekely
and he didn’t want to use steroids while
handling breakup-induced depression. Canseco’s still on a steroid today, but it’s prescribed. After more than two decades of
abuse, he quit juicing in 2008, but now needs
a testosterone boost since his body no longer
produces enough naturally. It means he’d
still fail a drug test. Asked if he’s all-natural,
Canseco nods his head, smiles and flexes
his right bicep. “I have super genetics, in
case you didn’t notice.” A boatload of arrogance, too. It’s so thick you stop noticing it
after a while. But strip back the ego—it’s
nearly impossible—and there’s no denying
Canseco’s unrequited love for America’s
pastime. He’ll wax eloquent for hours about
hitting angles, the science behind powerful
cuts and the way the ball spins. The love of
the game and relentless pursuit of the comeback dream baffles Canseco’s nephew. “I’ve
never seen anything like it,” Alfonso says.
“One thing is for sure, though—it’s a lovehate relationship.”
continued on p. 70
money canseco
continued FRoM p. 46
“Ready to ride the rocket?” he asks. Canseco’s sitting in the driver’s seat, grinning.
We’re late for his batting cage session,
though he has an excuse ready: “We’ll tell
them we killed three midgets and stopped
at a porn shop.” Perfect. As we get out of
the car at the On Deck Baseball Academy,
Canseco explains he’s taking a little BP
himself, but first he’ll be giving hitting lessons to a guy named Foul Ball Paul, who
has a disability. At first, Foul Ball Paul—a
26-year-old who’s decked out in full baseball
gear and a blue hat with his nickname
embroidered across the front—seems like
a politician’s photo-op. Then Canseco walks
in and plants a high-five on Paul, who peppers him with questions about the recent
breakup with Shennib. Canseco promises
to fill him in when they go running the next
day. The owner of 1,260,000 baseball cards,
Paul knows everything about baseball—it’s
the game that unlocked his savant-like
capabilities. He’s missing a gene required
to process information, resulting in a disability his father likens to autism. Paul owns
1,262 Jose Canseco baseball cards, but it’s
clear he doesn’t idolize the 1988 MVP.
They’re friends, and a love of baseball is
their shared passion. “Jose always takes
time with Paulie, he always has,” Paul’s
dad, Barry, says while his son takes cuts in
the batting cage under Canseco’s direction.
“A lot of the other guys who retire don’t
want to take the time, but Jose’s different.”
After Paul tires and Canseco takes his turn
murdering balls in the cage, a kid wearing
No. 33—known around these parts as the
“Mini Bash Brother”—asks Canseco if they
can take a photo together. This time, Canseco smiles for the camera. Before he leaves,
he signs a bunch of baseballs for kids.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he says. “You’ll ruin
the bad boy image.”
But Canseco chips away at that image on
a regular basis. He opens car doors for passengers, helps them out of his car, pulls out
chairs for women at dinner, even offers up
bites of his dessert. Many of the phone calls
Canseco takes with his agent Jose Melendez
are because Melendez has questions—he’s
never been an agent before. Canseco likes
70 SPORTSNET
and trusts Melendez, so he took him on as
a favour a few months ago, and he’s teaching him the rules of the trade. Canseco helps
Melendez for the same reason he lets three
people live with him, rent-free: “They’re
good people who need help.” It doesn’t matter that two of them are friends of his ex.
Canseco is never more kitten-like than
at the mention of Josie. On an uncluttered
desk in his upstairs office, there are only
two pictures, and they’re both of his daughter. The little girl with the long blond hair
is riding a brown pony, and she’s smiling
ear to ear. In another framed eight-by-ten,
she’s grinning for a grade school photo. This
is where baseball has cost Canseco most.
Today, his 15-year-old daughter lives in Los
Angeles with her mother, Jessica. Josie is
a five-foot-nine model and in Grade 10. Canseco pulls out his phone and scrolls through
pictures every time her name comes up. It
always makes him emotional. “I’ve sacrificed the last six years being far away from
my daughter because of baseball,” he says.
“It’s about time I was there for her. It’s taken
a lot out of me. A lot.”
On the desk next to those pictures,
though, is an unsigned contract that will
take him 3,000 miles away from her. Canseco doesn’t want to sign it. He isn’t excited
about playing independent baseball with
the Massachusetts-based Worcester Tornadoes, because even though it’s baseball,
it’s too far away. But Canseco knows he’ll
sign it anyway, because his playing days
are numbered. He’ll move even farther away
from the love of his life in pursuit of the
other love of his life. Again.
Canseco’s massive shoulders are hunched
over in the booth of an IHOP, his mouth and
eyebrows moving almost constantly because
of the tic he’s had since he was a kid. The
camera and the crowd of people are gone.
For the first time, there are no theatrics, just
blunt honesty. Canseco holds up a single
finger when asked how many friends he has.
Roger Clark, a guy he met through baseball
seven years ago. “I had a lot of friends when
I had money,” he says. “When I had no
money, they all disappeared.” He can count
the other people he cares for on one hand:
Josie, his sister Barbie, his nephews and his
niece. Twin brother Ozzie is on the fringe;
Canseco doesn’t discuss him, and Melendez
uses the word “hate” to describe the brothers’ relationship. After his father died last
February, Canseco lost his sounding board;
it crushed him. Now, if he’s upset, he talks
to Bruce. Canseco calls himself a leper but
he won’t admit he’s lonely. Asked to name a
friend of his uncle’s, his nephew doesn’t have
an answer. “I’m his friend,” Alfonso says.
Alone in the IHOP, Canseco makes The
Decision. He’s going to sign that contract.
A minute later he’s on the phone with
Worcester Tornadoes owner Todd Breighner, discussing the move. Canseco makes
clear he wants his own room on the road.
“I don’t want to room with any players half
my age,” he tells Breighner, laughing. Playing baseball with those guys, for some reason, isn’t laughable. When he hangs up the
phone, Canseco shrugs. The deal doesn’t
even bring a smile to his face. He knows
it’s another decision that isolates him while
he chases the impossible. “The game’s
gonna take me away from my daughter
again,” he says. “It bothers me a lot.”
Jose Canseco is afraid of a life without
baseball. So afraid that he won’t leave the
game until he has no choice, even if it means
putting greater distance between himself
and the person he cares for most. A couple
in their 80s strolls by. As he watches them
walk away, Canseco owns up to what makes
saying goodbye to the game so hard, the
reason he’ll work out and have cannons for
arms until he dies. “I don’t want to be 80
and look back at what I used to be,” he says.
“It’s such a long journey to the top, but
the fall is so fast. It’s always more painful,
and you don’t know how to handle it.” Few
athletes do, and fewer still would admit it.
Canseco is enduring a private struggle
in the most public way possible, in part
because it’s profitable, but also because he
isn’t ashamed to admit that life sucks today
compared to when he was a star ballplayer,
that he’d do anything to get that life back.
From a distance, Canseco’s struggle is
funny; he’s a joke. Up close, it’s heartbreaking. Canseco won’t let go of the game that
defined and then destroyed him.
He doesn’t know if his stint with the Tornadoes will work out. He doesn’t know what
he’ll do next, or with the rest of his life.
Everything is framed by the game he loves,
and by regret. “My life has been sucked out
of me from Major League Baseball,” he says.
“That’s it. I’ve got nothing left.”
@krrutherford