Canseco continues to revel in his role as informer, betrayer, creep

Who is a worse human being, the baseball player who uses performance-enhancing drugs or the baseball player who snitches on other ballplayers who use performance-enhancing drugs.

I'll put this another way. Which man is the bigger sinner, and if that word "sinner" seems moralistic, even biblical, that's exactly what I intend.

I'm talking about Jose Canseco who, as far as I can tell, has been a drug user, a drug distributor and a snitch. His miserable life encompasses all three sins. His miserable life is tangled and complicated and toxic but, in the interest of clarity, I focus on his role as informer, betrayer and creep.

The drug user in baseball gets consigned to one of the circles of hell. He is a cheater. He is a law breaker. He breaks faith with fans. But those are not his greatest sins. His greatest sin is indirect. It is a byproduct of his cheating and law breaking. His greatest sin is helping create a culture in which every ballplayer must take drugs to compete and survive.

His greatest sin is encouraging kids -- high school students -- to take these drugs to move up the pyramid of baseball players and one day make it in the big leagues. This encouragement is indirect. The cheating ballplayer does not intend it -- probably never thinks about high school baseball players. But he sins nonetheless. High school and college players have died as a result of these drugs and the indirect encouragement of the cheaters. We have experienced this tragedy in our own community.

I say the snitch is even worse than the drug user. You may disagree, and I accept that. But I am talking about intention, and the snitch intends to hurt people. It is his primary goal. Canseco went about hurting his friends and co-workers and he did it with malice.

First, he wrote that book "Juiced," in which he named names of alleged drug users, and just plain drug users -- Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro. I could go on. You might argue he did it for the good of the game. And, in fact, it did good. It brought the entire steroid mess to a crisis and made baseball take action. You might say he named names to help his friends -- he was performing a kind of public intervention so they'd stop hurting their bodies.

But you know none of that is true. Canseco did not care about doing good for baseball -- that was an inadvertent byproduct of his snitching. And he did not care about helping drug users. He wrote the book to make money, pure and simple. He needed money because he's mismanaged his life, and squealing was his best source of income. He did not care whom he hurt or embarrassed or what lives he's ruined -- poor McGwire has become a semi-recluse. Canseco, who is a moral vacuum, seemed to enjoy the role of Judas.

You may wonder why I'm making a big deal about Canseco's snitching. I am thinking about the clubhouse code, how things that happen there are private, off the record, between the players and only the players. I am thinking Canseco violated that code. I am thinking about people at a place of business -- any people, people like you and I. Sometimes we tell each other secrets, serious secrets, secrets that might harm us if they get out. We expect our friends, our colleagues, to honor our secrets -- "I'm telling you, but please don't pass this around." Almost always our friends protect us. It is the decent thing to do.

If we hear that our friend "told on us," it feels like a kick to the gut. It makes us dizzy with sheer horror. The information was privileged, revealed with the deepest trust. Canseco is a trust breaker and a sinner and a rat in the world of men.

Now, he has a second book, "Vindicated," another cynical attempt to make money and keep himself in the news. Because, honestly, who cares about Jose Canseco? In the book, he professes to have the goods on Alex Rodriguez. He is snitching again, doing harm.

I recently have seen him interviewed on television, that smug face -- it's pudgy now, older, not as handsome as it once was. It's as if his inner ugliness is taking over his exterior. I object to television people interviewing Canseco. They should shun him, treat him like the pariah he is. They interview him for the entertainment value, a crummy justification. If I were God, I would put a prohibition on Canseco -- "You have transgressed and you never do another interview in your life."

If Canseco's agent were to phone me and offer an exclusive one-on-one with Canseco, I would reply, "Jose Canseco does not exist."

Baseball players should avoid him, make him unwelcome in every clubhouse in America. I believe that already is the case. If I were God, I would consign him to the circle of hell for people who murder reputations. If I were God, I would condemn him to the silence and indifference he deserves.

You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at 521-5486 or lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.