Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big

When Jose Canseco burst into the Major Leagues in the 1980s, he changed the sport — in more ways than one. No player before him possessed his mixture of speed and power, which allowed him to become the first man in history to belt more than forty home runs and swipe more than forty bases in the same season. He won Rookie of the Year, Most Valuable Player, and a World Series ring.

Canseco shattered the mold of the out-of-shape baseball player and ushered in a new era of superathletes who looked like bodybuilders, made outrageous salaries, and enjoyed rock-star lifestyles. And the ticket for this ride? Steroids. Behind the gaudy stats and the glamour of his public life, Canseco cultivated a secret just about everyone in MLB knew about, one that would alter the game of baseball and the way we view our heroes forever. Canseco made himself a guinea pig of the performance-enhancing drugs that were only just beginning to infiltrate the American underground. Anabolic steroids, human growth hormones — Canseco mixed, matched, and experimented to such a degree that he became known throughout the league as "The Chemist." He passed his knowledge on to trainers and fellow players, and before long, performance-enhancing drugs were running rampant throughout Major League Baseball. Sluggers scooping up pitches at their ankles and blasting them out of the park, pitchers cranking fastballs inning after inning — Canseco showed the players how to customize their doses to sculpt the bodies they wanted, and baseball as we know it was the result.

"In this poorly written, controversial memoir, Canseco, a one-time American League MVP, reveals himself to be an unapologetic user of performance-enhancing drugs. Canseco readily admits that he was never the most talented of athletes, and that he never really had the drive to be a star until he made a promise of greatness to his dying mother. After a year of playing some uninspired minor league ball, Canseco packed on a superhuman 25 pounds of muscle in one off-season with the help of steroids and a human growth hormone. A string of tainted baseball achievements followed — including an all-star invitation as a rookie, an MVP award and a World Series title with the Oakland A's — before his life and career unraveled. Judging from the recent BALCO case, baseball certainly does have a steroid problem. But despite the headline-grabbing claims in this book, whether Canseco really knows anything about the problem beyond his own use is questionable. Rather, what emerges is a portrait of a bitter, disgraced ex-player who so desperately wants respect that he casts his own extraordinary recklessness as perfectly commonplace, a scorched-earth attempt to raise his own legend by bringing the game — and some of its great players — down to his level. Most shocking is that Canseco remains an unabashed booster of steroids, claiming they'll one day be used safely under medical supervision to propel humans to better health and great feats. Doctors disagree, and it should be noted that doctors did not administer Canseco's steroid use. 'Is it cheating,' Canseco asks in a revealing moment of moral relativism, 'to do what everyone wants you to do?' If that very question were asked by a little leaguer, its answer could not be more obvious." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

One of the most electrifying and controversial athletes ever to step onto the baseball diamond shares outrageous tales of sex, drugs, and hard partying in the major leagues — as well as a never-before-seen look at baseball's dark secret: steroids.

Jose Canseco was born in Havana, Cuba. He and his family immigrated to Miami in the 1970s. He was drafted by the Oakland Athletics and in his first season hit 33 home runs and 117 RBIs, earning the Rookie of the Year award. In 1988, Canseco won the American League MVP Award after a season batting .307, with 42 homers and 124 RBIs. In all, he played for seven different teams and ended his baseball career with a total of 462 home runs. Today, Canseco lives a quiet life in California with his daughter, Josie.