ARE BATHROOMS THE NEW CONFERENCE ROOMS?
Remember Sen. Larry Craig? You know the guy who made an airport bathroom into a tourist site after his arrest? Well, we were told at the time that nothing good goes on in restrooms if you stay past your time, so to speak, that you need to be there; “wide stance” or not. Today, reports that I have a hard time understanding, tell me that MLB investigators went to a book signing to get a meeting with Jose Canseco and asked that he be ushered into the men’s room so that they could speak in private. Hell, can you imagine all those coffee drinkers at the little tables set around in those places now, trying to get into the room to do what comes naturally and being told that it had been booked as a meeting room? Or maybe someone just put up one of those grungy yellow plastic signs that say that the place is being cleaned at the moment which is a riot since the condition of the sign should tell you everything you want to know. Nonetheless, it seems that the meeting took place and boy was Canseco happy and proud.
The glee in his voice comes through the quotes of both he and his attorney. Oh yeah, he travels with one which I guess is the newest spring accessory for men; better than a jaunty scarf or one of those hats that Tom Brady seems to favor. And the attorney sounds like a girl who didn’t think she was going to be asked to the prom and is saved at the last minute by a gorgeous guy. Canseco? He’s giddy with glee, flabbergasted that he is being taken seriously by the lords of baseball who wanted him to disappear after the first book. Having seen him in action in front of Congress during the first hearings that drove McGuire into oblivion, Palmeiro into a lie and Sosa into speaking only Spanish, they were just pissed off that Canseco could make such bold accusations and not seem upset about them. It took 2 years and federal drug busts to get baseball to organize the Mitchell Report when they could have done it sooner if they had listened to Jose.
This is all Canseco ever wanted…well not really, he also needs some dough and maybe he’ll get a full time gig out of this. His attorney hypothesized that he could be their permanent steroids snitch with an office in NY just like any baseball executive. Laugh if you want to but here’s what I’ve got to say: MLB officials put their heads in the sand, got bullied by the union and hoped it would all go away. What makes them any more righteous and less sleazy than Canseco? OK, this second book is full of innuendo rather than hard core facts and first person accounts of him seeing guys juicing or helping them do so by exchanging butt shots. But maybe he’s got the goods on A Rod, right? And maybe not but MLB knew it missed something that could have been learned short of Congress poking its head into all this and they are trying to avoid that again. Notice, by the way, that A Rod is NOT taking the Clemens route to Congress by hiring a lawyer and denying everything written by Canseco in front of a press conference. But watch out for more bathroom meetings since no one wants to get caught short, or with their pants down, when the heat is on to get to the bottom of the steroids story. Did I just say that? Yeah, and sorry.
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