You may have heard by now that on March 31, Jose Canseco’s follow-up to his 2005 book “Juiced“, will be hitting the bookstore shelves. By the way, in case you didn’t make the connection, that’s Opening Day for many teams. But who expects a guy like Canseco to care about such trivialities?
Anyhow, The New York Times published a story yesterday that claimed that Major League Baseball had been in touch with the FBI recently over an alleged incident between the former The Surreal Life participant and Detroit Tigers slugger Magglio Ordonez. According to the Times’ sources, Canseco posed a proposition to Mags – help finance my movie, or you’ll see your name in my new book.
Ordonez himself has thus far refused to talk about the topic in detail, but has apparently at least confirmed that Canseco did contact him. Mags then informed Detroit GM Dave Dombrowski about the situation, and Dombrowski alerted the Commissioner’s Office, who in turn called the FBI. The Times story goes on to mention that it wasn’t just Mags who was given this ultimatum. Supposedly, Ordonez’ agent, Scott Boras, was also approached with a similar proposition to keep his client’s name clean. However, no formal investigation was ever launched by the FBI – because Ordonez didn’t want them to.
“I didn’t want to press charges against him,” Ordóñez said. “I don’t want any problems. He is probably desperate for money. I don’t understand why he is trying to put people down.”
What’s also interesting here is that Mags is denying that he was specifically asked for money in exchange for the omission. Canseco’s camp is obviously denying the report.
So who’s lying? Did Canseco really give Ordonez and Boras an ultimatum – even if it was of the “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” variety? Or did Ordonez fabricate the story as a preemptive strike to discredit Canseco, knowing full well that his name is going to be in that book?
Sarah Green 
melissa 
What’s great is that, even if Canseco did try to blackmail Miggy, I don’t know if that discredits him. I mean, if we were willing to overlook Canseco’s own steroid use, as well as the domestic violence charges, the bar brawls and his participation in The Surreal Life, we surely aren’t going to draw the line at blackmail, are we?