Canseco's new career: film entrepreneur/blackmailer?

January 24, 2008

José Canseco, the former major league slugger and admitted steroid user who exposed other players in his 2005 best-selling book “Juiced,” offered to keep a Detroit Tigers outfielder “clear” in his next book if the player invested money in a film project Canseco was promoting, according to a person in baseball with knowledge of the situation.

That was the lead in today’s NY Times story about the latest in the increasingly strange publishing saga of Canseco and his follow-up to Juiced.

Canseco said he tried to contact Ordóñez several months ago to talk about his books but did not hear back from him. Canseco refused to say whether Ordóñez would be named in connection with performance-enhancing drugs in his second book. “You are going to have to buy the book to see that,” he said.

You can’t buy this kind of advertising.

Canseco said in news accounts in 2006 that he was working as an executive producer of a documentary movie to be based on “Juiced.” The movie, originally scheduled for release in late 2007, has not been made. The job of an executive producer often includes fund-raising. Canseco said he was also working on “Vindicated” and a novel during this time….

Canseco’s book agent, Brett Saxton, has said the book contains some “huge” new names of players who used performance-enhancing drugs, in addition to those named three years ago. Last July, Canseco told WEEI Radio in Boston that he had unspecified derogatory information on Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees.

Last week’s Only a Game featured a skit about the new special investigation committee Bud Selig had appointed to look deeper into the PED situation. One mock-caller was based on A-Rod wanting to make sure his name wasn’t on the list and wondering why Canseco wasn’t being prosecuted.


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