Admitted steroid user and Twitter superstar Jose Canseco has finally found a professional baseball team to play for this year. The Worcester Tornadoes signed the former all-star baseball player Jose Canseco to a single-season contract. The Worcester ball club is part of the Canadian-American Association of Professional Baseball (Can-Am League). It is not affiliated with either Minor League Baseball (MiLB) or Major League Baseball (MLB).
Canseco is currently on testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) to treat the hypogonadism he believes resulted from over a decade of steroid abuse.
Canseco was almost signed by the “Tigres de Quintana Roo” of Cancun until he was asked to take a steroid test. He then revealed that he was using testosterone cypionate and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) as part of a doctor-prescribed medical treatment without a therapeutic use exemption (TUE).
Cuauhtémoc Rodríguez Meza, the CEO of the Tigres, told Mexican sports media that the team could not sign Canseco in the absence of an exemption justifying his use of the steroid testosterone. Canseco promised on Twitter that everything would be sorted out with the Tigres. However, apparently Canseco abandoned hopes of returning to Cancun to play in the Mexican Baseball League with his move to Massachusetts.
Tood Breighner, the owner of the Worcester Tornadoes, claimed that the signing of Canseco was not a publicity stunt. Breighner said he was not worried about Canseco’s history of steroid use and and the negative fallout resulting from Canseco’s book “Juiced”. The autobiographical book helped launch the war on steroid in Major League Baseball and led the way for a crackdown on steroids in the sport.
But Breighner doesn’t think Canseco’s steroid-tainted reputation will hurt the image of his family-friendly Worcester Tornadoes. In fact, Breighner seems to admire what Canseco has done by exposing the issue of steroids.
“With everything that’s happened with major league baseball and all the people they found who had done steroids, I think people will agree that it took some courage for him to step up and call people out,” said Breighner. “If you didn’t have people like him doing that, you’d wonder where we’d be today with that whole (steroid) issue.”
Breighner has little to worry about by signing an admitted steroid user on TRT. Even if Canseco fails to produce an TUE for his use of steroids, the Can-Am League has no steroid-testing policy in place.
Canseco will play in the season opener for the Tornadoes on May 17, 2012. The Tornadoes face the defending Can-Am League champion Quebec.
expected to debut on May 17 when the Tornadoes open the CanAm League season in Newark. The home opener is at 7:05 p.m. May 21 against defending champion Quebec Capitales.
Photo credit: TheBostonJam.com
Source:
Elfland, M. (April 20, 2012). Slugger Jose Canseco signs with Worcester Tornadoes. Retrieved from http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20120420%2FNEWS%2F120429992%2F-1%2FRSS01
