Jose Canseco: Steroids Prophet

Bostonist has spent the early afternoon reeling over the news that Manny Ramirez tested positive for steroids. (Does that mean that 2004 and 2007 are as tainted as Roger Clemens's World Series victory in 2000? And, if Manny used steroids while he played for the Sox, whom did he share them with?)

But there is at least one baseball pundit who is completely unfazed by the controversy. Jose Canseco. The admitted steroids user—on the Oakland As and Texas Rangers he was something like steroids Patient Zero—and grandiloquent author whose contributions to the English language include the neologism "slumpbuster," is also something of a steroids clairvoyant.

Consider his April 2009 appearance at USC that was chronicled by the LA Times's Kurt Streeter:

What about Manny Ramirez? someone asks.

Canseco laughs and offers his theory. A-Rod was exposed only when his name was leaked from a list of 104 major leaguers who in a 2003 test showed up positive for steroids. Because the test was anonymous, those names were not supposed to be made public. But in Canseco's mind, baseball's power brokers know who is on it: players he is sure will be seen as toxic if the truth comes out.

[...]

Why didn't Ramirez get a long-term deal [with the Dodgers this year]? Canseco asks. Why were owners gun-shy about signing arguably the game's best hitter? [LATimes]

Canseco's prolific name-dropping is easy to ridicule, but he's rarely wrong, which means that nearly everybody in baseball has done or is doing steroids or that Canseco knows where the bodies are buried.