Canseco is the steroids puppet master

Jose Canseco is a genius. There is no more denying it. The man is truly one of the greater… Jose Canseco is a genius. There is no more denying it. The man is truly one of the greater minds of my lifetime, and his genius even extends farther back than that.

Canseco has managed to once again become relevant. People know and talk about him on a regular basis. With his second book, “Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars and the Battle to Save Baseball,” just released, Canseco is back to doing what he does best: saving baseball.

Canseco first caused a stir in the literary world back in 2005 with the release of his first book, “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits ‘ How Baseball Got Big,” where he accused Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro and others of using steroids throughout their careers.

He also estimated about 85 percent of players used some form of performance enhancing drugs at the highest point of steroid use, but he wasn’t taken too seriously. Then more information came out about steroid use in the current era of baseball, Congress stepped in and held a hearing about steroids, and suddenly, Canseco came out looking he had a halo hanging over his mammoth skull.

And on Tuesday, Canseco released his second masterpiece, where he said he introduced Alex Rodriguez to a known provider of steroids. He also said Roger Clemens and Magglio Ordonez used steroids.

Once again, people aren’t really sure whether or not to believe Canseco. But critics wonder why if he had anything on A-Rod, arguably the game’s biggest star and someone destined to be an all-time great, why hold it out of his first book?

Well, it seems like it was just a part of Canseco’s master plan. Canseco is basically the Johnny Appleseed of the steroids era of baseball. He spent his entire career planting tiny steroid seeds around the league, watching them gloriously blossom into a full-fledged forest of fiends. After years of waiting, Canseco is now simply frolicking through his forest picking off whichever piece of fruit he so pleases.

Canseco was a huge star back when he was a member of the Oakland Athletics from 1985 to 1992. He claims to have started taking steroids in 1984, introducing numerous players around the league to the drug throughout his career, either injecting them himself or hooking them up with a trainer who could supply steroids. The seeding has been going on for years at this point.

He then spent the remainder of his career, 10 more seasons, on seven different teams including another year in Oakland. This helped Canseco plant his seed throughout the rest of the country.

His last season was in 2001 with the Chicago White Sox, where he played with Ordonez. He then spent the next four years lying low for the most part, until “Juiced” came out four years later.

The feasting begins. And even the feasting was a genius plan by Canseco.

With “Juiced,” he took out a few big names, but players that looked like they could play on the Monstars if they ever made a “Space Jam” for baseball. At that point, he plucked a few nice looking pieces of fruit from his garden, but he knew there was juicier fruit to come.

With “Vindicated,” he picked the ripest of the ripe in A-Rod. He also threw in Ordonez as the piece of fruit that looks a little old but tastes delicious. But A-Rod and Ordonez are both big names and finished first and second, respectively, in American League MVP voting last season. Those are the types of fruit that win contests at county fairs.

Had he included everyone in one book, it would’ve been pandemonium. Some guys would’ve been lost in the shuffle, but since he did it in droves, everyone gets their fair share of ridicule. And now Canseco can lie back in a hammock, an iced tea in one hand and piece of fruit in the other, watching what unfolds. But he won’t do that.

Not Canseco. Like any great American, he won’t stop until he has completed the task he set out to do. And that task is to save baseball. Canseco is the closest thing sports has to a superhero right now. Sorry, Dwight Howard.

For all Canseco has done, he won’t make the Hall of Fame. It’s unfortunate, but he’s not really deserving of it, anyway. He’s deserving of something much bigger. I doubt many others would be in favor of putting him on some form of currency, although I can think of no greater honor and no more deserving person than Canseco. But then again, George Washington is on the dollar bill and the quarter, and for what? Never telling a lie? So far it seems that Canseco is on that same path. Yet I don’t think even Canseco would want that. He’s far too humble.

He seems to get his jollies from sitting around and every few years picking away at a few more pieces of fruit from his Garden of Heathens.