José Canseco: 1964—: Baseball player

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As the American League's Rookie of the Year in 1986 and the first player to hit forty home runs and steal forty bases in a single season, José Canseco was one of the outstanding baseball players of his day. Named the Most Valuable Player in the American League in 1988 during his first stint with the Oakland Athletics (A's), Canseco indeed seemed well on his way to a long illustrious major league career. Yet a series of injuries and legal problems plagued the slugger during the 1990s. He played for six different teams during the decade—never for more than two-and-a-half seasons on any one team—before briefly joining the New York Yankees in 2000. Closing out his career with the Chicago White Sox in 2001, Canseco alleged that he had been blackballed from baseball because of his controversial persona on and off the field. However, his retirement as a professional athlete proved just as controversial as his playing days. In November of 2002 he pled guilty to charges of assault against two Miami Beach bar patrons and agreed to enter an anger management program as part of his probation. Canseco also made headlines by declaring that he was writing a tell-all book about steroid use in major league baseball, which he claimed was rampant.

José Canseco y Capas and his twin brother, Osvaldo (Ozzie) were born on July 2, 1964, to José and Barbara Canseco in Havana, Cuba. The Cansecos also had a daughter, Teresa. When José and his brother were just nine months old, the family received permission to leave Cuba for the United States. Their father had worked as an oil company executive until the Cuban Revolution installed Fidel Castro in power in 1959. Canseco tried to make a living by giving private lessons in English, but the struggle proved too much. The family had to leave almost all of their material possessions behind in order to emigrate from Cuba and arrived in Miami with only about fifty dollars. The Cansecos found establishing themselves in the close-knit emigré community of Cubans in south Florida was difficult, however, they quickly adjusted to life in America. Both José and his brother Ozzie attended public schools in Miami, eventually finishing their education at Coral Park High School. Both were star baseball players on the school's team. As a pitcher, Ozzie was drafted by the New York Yankees. José, playing third base and outfield, was also drafted as a teenager in 1982, going to the Oakland Athletics in the fifteenth round.

At a Glance . . .

Born José Canseco y Capas, Jr. on July 2, 1964, in Havana, Cuba; son of José and Barbara Canseco; married Esther Canseco (divorced); married Jessica Canseco (divorced); children: Josie (with Jessica).

Career: Baseball player, 1985-01: Oakland A's, 1985-92; Texas Rangers, 1992-94; Boston Red Sox, 1994-96; Oakland A's, 1997; Toronto Blue Jays, 1998; Tampa Bay Devil Rays, 1999-00; New York Yankees, 2000; Chicago White Sox, 2001.

Awards: American League Rookie of the Year, 1986; American League Most Valuable Player, 1988.

Address: Literary agent— Ronald Laitsch, Authentic Creations, 875 Lawrenceville-Suwanee Road, Suite 310-306, Lawrenceville, GA 30043; (770) 339-7126.

Named Rookie of the Year

Canseco's first two seasons in the minor leagues found him playing for teams in Miami, Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Medford, Oregon, where he led the Northwest League in strikeouts. It was not until the death of his mother in 1984 that Canseco seemed to revise his outlook on the game of baseball and took his playing seriously. Advancing to the A's Modesto affiliate in California that year, Canseco led the team in runs batted in (RBIs) and helped the squad win that year's league title. At the beginning of the 1985 season, Canseco was sent to the Huntsville Stars in Alabama, where he had eighty RBIs in fifty-eight games. After playing half the season in Huntsville, Canseco was called up to Washington to join the Tacoma Rainiers, where he compiled a .348 batting average in sixty games. On September 2, 1985, Canseco finally made his major-league debut with the Oakland A's as an outfielder. He played twenty-nine games in his first partial season in the majors and ended the season with an impressive .302 batting average.

Although Canseco had an unenviable record of striking out at the plate, the six-foot, four-inch, 240-pound player continued to rack up impressive batting statistics in his first seasons with the A's. In 157 games of the 1986 season, Canseco hit 33 home runs—almost breaking the team's record—and attained 117 RBIs in 600 trips to the plate. Despite leading the A's with 175 strikeouts, Canseco earned a .240 batting average and was named the American League's Rookie of the Year at the conclusion of the season. In 1987 Canseco improved his batting average to .257, with 31 home runs and another 113 RBIs.

For the 1988 season, Canseco boldly predicted that he would achieve something no other baseball player had accomplished: hit forty home runs and steal forty bases during the regular season. Considering that he had just fifteen stolen bases and 31 home runs the prior season, the goal seemed far-fetched. Yet Canseco closed in on the record with determination and on September 18, 1988, hit his fortieth homer of the year; he eventually closed the season with 42 home runs in all. Five days after his fortieth home run, Canseco stole two bases in a game against the Milwaukee Brewers, bringing his total to 40. Led by Canseco's slugging, the A's won their league title and faced the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. The A's lost the series, but Canseco emerged from the season with a career-high .307 batting average. He also took home Most Valuable Player honors for the American League.

Faced Numerous Legal and Physical Troubles

Suffering from a fractured left hand, Canseco played a reduced schedule in 1989. He nevertheless signed a five-year contract with the A's, set to begin in 1991, worth an estimated $23.5 million, which made him the highest-paid baseball player in the league at that time. The A's returned to the World Series again in 1989, this time facing their regional rivals, the San Francisco Giants. The A's took the title with Canseco posting a .357 batting average during the series. The team returned for a third consecutive appearance in the World Series in 1990, when the A's lost to the Cincinnati Reds.

Although he recovered from his hand injury, Canseco suffered from back problems in the 1990 season and was continually plagued by health problems for the remainder of his career. More troubling were the headlines Canseco garnered with his life off the field. In 1992 Canseco was arrested after he plowed his car into a car driven by his wife, Esther Canseco, in Miami. As part of a plea agreement to avoid conviction on the charge of aggravated assault, Canseco underwent counseling and fulfilled a community-service requirement. The couple subsequently divorced, and Canseco married a second time, to Jessica Sekely. The marriage proved equally turbulent, with Canseco arrested in Miami in 1997 after striking his wife while they were having an argument in a friend's car. Canseco again reached a plea agreement in January of 1998 and avoided jail time by agreeing to undergo counseling. The Cansecos had a daughter, Josie, who lived with her mother after the couple divorced in 1999.

Near the end of the 1992 season, the A's traded Canseco to the Texas Rangers, where he completed the season with a .233 batting average. In 1993 Canseco made his major-league debut as a pitcher with the Rangers, but an injury to his elbow, which later required surgery, cut the endeavor short. Canseco remained with the Rangers through the end of the 1994 season, when he was traded to the Boston Red Sox. He almost tied his career-high batting average with a .306 mark in the 1995 season, but injuries again limited his play the following season. Returning to Oakland as a free agent for the 1997 season, Canseco joined the Toronto Blue Jays in 1998 with a one-year contract worth over $2 million. Although he had a fairly good season with the team and hit a career-high forty-six home runs, Canseco was disappointed when the Blue Jays declined to re-sign him. "I just didn't think I was in their plans," he told Baseball Digest in August of 1999. "I think it was obvious last year at the All-Star break when I had twenty-four home runs and twenty-four stolen bases and they didn't re-sign me by then. Especially when I had approached them a couple of times."

Confronted More Problems After Retirement

Canseco was still able to command more than $3 million a season from the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, where he played in 1999 and 2000, before joining the New York Yankees for the end of the 2000 season. Canseco joined the Yankees just in time for their World Series victory over the New York Mets; it was Canseco's fourth championship appearance and the second time he was a member of the winning team. His stint with the team turned out to be brief, however, and Canseco finished his major-league career at the end of the 2001 season with the Chicago White Sox. He spent part of the 2002 season with a minor league team in Charlotte, but announced in May that he was retiring from professional baseball. Over his seventeen seasons in the majors, Canseco had compiled a .266 batting average while hitting 462 home runs and earning 1,407 RBIs.

Although Canseco's career statistics were more than respectable, his image as a temperamental player who was often in trouble off the field continued to dog him. In November of 2001 Canseco and his brother—who played only two seasons of major league baseball in the early 1990s—were arrested after punching out two Miami Beach bar patrons on Halloween night. Although the bar patrons ended up with a broken nose and busted lip that required twenty stitches, Canseco insisted in comments made to the ESPN web site, "I know that my brother and myself were definitely victims and the girl I was with got sexually assaulted. We got attacked. We are the victims here. We just defended ourselves." In November of 2002 Canseco pled guilty to one count of felony aggravated battery and two counts of misdemeanor battery in exchange for three years probation, anger management classes, and 250 hours of community service. Ozzie Canseco received a similar sentence.

Canseco also made headlines after his retirement by threatening to publish a tell-all book about his experiences in major league baseball. His most disturbing allegations focused on the use of steroids by baseball players to improve their performance. Long rumored to have used steroids himself to bulk up and become a more powerful hitter, Canseco admitted privately that he had both injected and ingested steroids throughout his career; he also estimated that as many as eighty-five percent of players in the majors were using steroids. Despite his accomplishments on the field, Canseco's controversial remarks cast doubt on his future as a Baseball Hall of Fame inductee. "The last ten years people have been laughing at him,"San Francisco Chronicle writer Bruce Jenkins told USA Today in May of 2002, "Hall of Famers are not the object of scorn."

Sources

Books

Sullivan, George, Sluggers: Twenty-Seven of Base-ball's Greatest, New York, Atheneum, 1991.

Periodicals

Baseball Digest, August 1999, p. 22.

Sports Illustrated, September 2, 2002, p. 34.

USA Today, May 15, 2002; May 17, 2002.

Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2002.

On-line

"Cansecos' trial opens; two rejected plea deal in August," ESPN Online, November 4, 2002, http://espn.go.com/nlb/news/2002/1104/1455438.html (March 26, 2003).

"Fight Leaves One Man with Broken Nose," November 13, 2001, ESPN Online, http://espn.go.com/nlb/news/2001/1113/1277769.html (March 26, 2003).

"José Canseco agrees to three years' probation," ESPN Online, November 5, 2002, http://espn.go.com/nlb/news/2002/1105/1456276.html (March 26, 2003).

"José Canseco Misses Hearing on Charges from Nightclub Scuffle," Sports Server Website, August 13, 2002, http://www.sportserver.com/blotter/v-text/story/497668p-3968719c.html?printer (March 26, 2003).

"José Canseco Statistics," Baseball Reference Website, http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/cansejo01.shtml (March 26, 2003).

"Literary agent: Canseco said he used steroids," ESPN Online, June 6, 2002, http://espn.go.com/mlb/news/2002/0606/1391783.html (March 26, 2003).

"Retired slugger says he plans to write tell-all book," ESPN Online, May 14, 2002, http://espn.go.com/nlb/news/2002/0514/1382336.html (March 26, 2003).

—Timothy Borden