‘You do what you love’: Jose Canseco slugs softballs at T-Bones game

Batting practice always comes first. The old ballplayer with the steroid stains on his career and shoulders that persist for days will step toward home plate, pull a composite bat out of a nylon bag and start whacking balls over the fence.

This is Jose Canseco’s life. This was Sunday at CommunityAmerica Ballpark.

You may be wondering, of course, what Canseco is doing here, in an independent league stadium in Kansas City, sweating through his cotton T-shirt, throwing his chemically enhanced arms into pitch after pitch, blasting softballs more than 400 feet to left field, just to the right of the old sign with the large cartoon bull.

It has been 13 years since Canseco, a former MVP and All-Star, retired in 2001, and it’s been nearly nine years since his tell-all book “Juiced” blew open the door on rampant steroid use in major league baseball. Canseco outed former teammates and steroid users such as Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro, and in classic Canseco style, he was brutally open about his wild and opulent lifestyle during his career. (The highlights included braggish stories about conquering “roadbeef” and “slumpbusters”.)

Nearly a decade later, Canseco is on the field here at CommunityAmerica Ballpark, ready to take part in a night of festivities while the Kansas City T-Bones face the St. Paul Saints in another American Association game.

This is what has become of Canseco, baseball's first 40-40 man and a rare truth-teller in the era of performance-enhancing drugs. He continues to exist and do stuff, and it's all kind of remarkable if you really think about it. For now, Canseco is touring the country in his CansecoMobile, raising money for charity, signing thousands of autographs, and, yes, hitting the crap out of softballs.

“We were in an RV for 26 hours straight,” Canseco says, recounting bits from a months-long tour with his agent.

He is in the afterlife of celebrity, living an existence that is, at worst, a little bizarre, and at best, an inspiring bit of maverick individualism. Canseco is doing things his way. In part, because he has to; in part, because that’s the way he likes it.

“You do what you love, and you do what you do best,” Canseco says. “For me, it’s hit baseballs and softballs over the fence.”

Baseball, perhaps more than any other sport, has a way of creating pariahs and personas non grata. Perhaps it’s the self-serious traditionalists, or the vast codas of unwritten rules, or the stigmas associated with cheating. From Joe Jackson to Pete Rose to Barry Bonds, each generation produces its share of unwelcomed ex-stars. Canseco believes this is incredibly unfair and hypocritical, of course. He took steroids, hit a million home runs, and never broke any official baseball rules.

“Absolutely,” Canseco says. “No if and buts about it. Even if you never tested positive — even if they suspect you used chemicals — you can’t go into the Hall of Fame. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Canseco is not advocating for a place in the Hall of Fame, only pointing out that players such as Bonds and Roger Clemens have come up short after playing out all-time great careers.

“Let’s assume some players tested positive for it, and they’re not allowing them in the Hall of Fame?” Canseco says. “That’s giving PEDs way too much credit. They don’t really work that well.”

The rest of Canseco’s steroid cohort — the Sosas, the Bondses, the Clemenses — have left baseball and not looked back. Most have shed the excess Schwarzenegger muscles. Few of them have found jobs or admiration in baseball circles.

To this point, neither has Canseco. On Sunday, he vaguely hinted that he’d like to be back in affiliated baseball, even at the minor-league level. He’s not sure if those opportunities exist. (I don’t know,” he says. “That’s interesting. Hopefully, we’ll find out eventually.”) Canseco believes he knows the mechanics of power hitting better than most: how to properly compress a baseball, how to create backspin and produce blunt power. He believes he has knowledge to pass along.

“The ideal job,” Canseco says, “you would want to manage.”

No, Canseco does not set small goals for himself.

One former steroid user that has found success is McGwire, who, after a few years of reclusiveness, found success as a hitting coach for the Cardinals and Dodgers. This fact has not been lost on Canseco, who has spent the last few years trying to reconcile with his former teammate. In late 2012, Canseco appeared at a Cardinals-Dodgers game with a black shirt that read: “Sorry For Everything Mark.” The Canseco apology tour has continued this summer.

To this point, McGwire has rebuffed Canseco’s advances, telling ESPN.com in late July that “ … it’s too late.”

“I think we all know the saying, ‘Time heals all,’” Canseco says. “But Mark is very mad at me, and he says it’s too late. I thought better late than never; it doesn’t make any sense.”

As Canseco says this, he’s wearing a turquoise T-Bones tank top that he snagged from the gift shop during an earlier autograph session. He sweated through his first shirt during batting practice, and he needed something new.

“It’s a girls’ tank top,” he says.

The night presses on, and Canseco runs through the routines of weird celebrity. More autographs, more interviews, then a post-game home run derby. Every day, he does this, living the life of an exiled baseball man. He turned 50 this year. He lives in Las Vegas. He still has the chiseled body of The Rock. He also takes on new projects.

Canseco recently made a cameo in a movie called “Piranha Sharks,” one of those B-list horror flicks where some scientist crossbreeds piranhas and Great White Sharks and the results are predictably gruesome.

“Piranha Sharks!” Canseco says, his face lighting up at the mention of the movie. “I’m playing an individual is who is actually promoting the piranha sharks and falls in love with them and has an addiction to them. I’m actually one of their protectors and I try to market them.”

There’s more to the movie role, though. Canseco is sitting inside a small independent league baseball stadium, and he’s talking about addiction, and the need to promote and advertise and succeed. Then you realize. That movie role?

“I play myself,” Canseco says.

This story was originally published August 3, 2014 at 9:59 PM with the headline "‘You do what you love’: Jose Canseco slugs softballs at T-Bones game."