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Juiced : Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big By Jose Canseco ( Amazon Remainders Account )
Release Date: 2005-02-14
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $25.95
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Product Description
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.
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Amazon.com Review
Touted as a Ball Four for the new millennium, Jose Canseco's Juiced promises to expose not only the rampant use of performance-enhancing substances in baseball (with steroids replacing the amphetamines of Bouton's day), but the painfully human flaws of its heroes as well. A steroid devotee since the age of 20, Canseco goes beyond admitting his own usage to claim that with the tacit approval of the league's powers-that-be he acted as baseball's ambassador of steroids and is therefore indirectly responsible for "saving" the game. Chief among his claims is that he introduced Mark McGwire to steroids in 1988 and that he often injected McGwire while they were teammates. According to Canseco, steroids and human growth hormones gave McGwire and Sammy Sosa (whose own usage was "so obvious, it was a joke") the strength, stamina, regenerative ability, and confidence they needed for a record-setting home run duel often credited with restoring baseball's popularity after the 1994 strike. Although he devotes a lot of ink to McGwire, Canseco envisions himself as a kind of Johnny Steroidseed, spreading the gospel of performance enhancement, naming a number of players that he either personally introduced to steroids or is relatively certain he can identify as fellow users. Because Canseco plays fast and loose with some of the facts of his own career he provides fodder for those looking to damage his credibility, but in many ways questions of public and personal perception are what raise the book beyond mere vitriolic tell-all. Those willing to heed his request and truly listen to what he has to say will find Juiced to be an occasionally insightful meditation on the workings of public perception and a consistently interesting character study. --Shane Farmer
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 Definitly worth a read!
Found this book to be very candid & HONEST assessment about one man's career in MLB. I read this book after reading 'Game of Shadows', then went on to read Jose Canseco's other book 'Vindicated' and found all these books compelling and informative. I admire anyone that can make a mistake (?), learn from it and then own up to it. Like him or not, Mr Canseco did a great public service by exposing the greed and deception behind the scenes by players and owners alike. Players are not heros, they're businemen as much as athletes and at one time, Steriods were good business. Level the playing field - Jose did it. Good read!
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 Seems truthful
I thought he was just a sleeze, but really, he does a great job of displaying the things he knows (seemingly) without speculating. He could have gotten all over Bonds and A-Rod, but refrains. He only speaks on guys he knows by first hand - and it's still a lot of people. Very fast read. Glad I read it. Very different perspective from Game of Shadows and the Mitchell Report.
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Entertaining ( gkygrl )
Jose Canseco's "Juiced" really introduced me to a bit of the steroid culture in baseball and the appeal that steroids definitely have. While reading "Juiced", I found myself yearning for the chance to try steroids and see what they would really offer to me (against all of my better judgment of course). He offers such a bright picture of them at times done in a disciplined way that who WOULDN'T want to give them a try when a career depends on them.
The book is entertaining and as Jose says: he is an entertainer. Don't expect anything cerebral here ... just a interesting view of some of the baseball culture that you may or may not know about.
I enjoyed the book for what it was and found it an entertaining, quick read that I enjoyed while floating around my swimming pool. This was perfect for that.
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unbelieveable at first
I read this book when it first came out and I am glad I did not review it then. Like many others I was skeptical about what Canseco was saying. I just couldn't believe that all the famous athletes that he named took steriods or HGH. The idea that he personal injected many of them seemed ludicrous. The media put it down as a bunch of lies to sell books. Canseco also had his ups and downs and did not have a great reputation in baseball. After the hearings things looked even worse. But what came out in the long run was that everything he said became highly plausible or confirmed by drug testing or further investigation. This book is now a landmark book in the history of major league baseball. The only thing I disagree with Canseco on in this book is the idea that taking steroids was good for the game of baseball even though it led to more home runs and excitement for the fans. At least in his new book based on the accumulated medical evidence he has changed his tune. No one can deny that this was one of the major books to blow the lid on the use of steriods in baseball.
I believe that Canseco wrote this book for the noteriety and the money and that his selective choice of names to name was deliberate to sensationalize the book and sell copies. He now freely admits to naming people to make the book marketable in his new book vindicated. Also I think the book was intended to provide a rationalization for his own use of steroid and for turning so many others onto it. But hte Mitchell report and other investigations has confirmed that those named were really users!
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book ( bessy1452 )
This was really fun to read. It's been passed along about 4 times...great beach reading
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