BLEACHERS BREW EST. MAY 2006

Someone asked me how my blog and newspaper column came to be titled "Bleachers Brew". It's like this, it's an amalgam of sorts of two things: The bleachers area in the stadium/arena where I used to sit when I would watch baseball, football, and basketball games and Miles Davis' great jazz album Bitches Brew. That's how it got culled together. I originally planned on calling it "The View from the Big Chair" that is a nod to Tears For Fear's second album, Songs from the Big Chair. So there.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Substance Abuse


As my former creative writing prof once said, "anyone can write, but writing well is altogether another animal." Hmm. Writing I guess must be harder than cooking for Chef Auguste Gusteau believes that anyone can cook.

Okay, enough of the silly thoughts and on to a silly writer in Jose Canseco. In his book Juiced, Canseco who used to be one half of the Oakland A's Bash Brothers (the other is another dope user in Mark McGwire), admitted that he used steroids. He also pointed out other major league players of being juiced.

Apparently coming clean isn't enough. He has a new book that he says will be out by the time the new baseball season gets underway and he's got info on Alex Rodriguez' use of 'roids. Unfortunately, former Sports Illustrated associate editor Don Yaeger, who had initially planned on collaborating with Canseco on the book, has decided against working with the former slugger turned Dr. Phil.

"I'm passing," Yaeger told the New York Daily News. "I had a chance to review the Jose Canseco [material] that he provided me. I don't think there's a book there. I don't know what they're going to do. I don't think he's got what he claims to have, certainly doesn't have what he claims to have on A-Rod. There's no meat on the bones." Go ahead and say it, Don... it has no substance (pun totally intended) literally and figuratively.

Maybe Yaeger should have also said that Canseco should have his head examined too.

In May 26, 1993, the Cleveland Indians' Carlos Martínez hit a fly ball that Canseco lost in the lights as he was crossing the warning track. The ball hit him in the head and bounced over the wall for a home run. The Canseco misplay was rated in 1998 as the greatest blooper of the two decades. A few days after the incident, the Harrisburg Heat (of the National Professional Soccer League which eventually became Major League Soccer) offered him a soccer contract.

Three days later, Canseco asked his manager, Kevin Kennedy, to let him pitch the eighth inning of a blowout loss to the Boston Red Sox. Canseco injured his arm, underwent Tommy John surgery, and was lost for the remainder of the season, leading him to suffer further indignity and ridicule.

And he's in for more when his sequel to Juiced hits bookstores by Opening Day of the 2008 season.

The working title of the book is "Vindicated." Now doesn't that remind you of another that has misused the word?

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