Report: Canseco Claims La Russa Used Steroids!

The Brushback, a Web site that’s part New York Times (slogan: all the sports news that’s fit to print) and part Onion, reports in its latest edition that whistle-blowing slugger Jose Canseco’s forthcoming book Vindicated contains allegations that his former Oakland A’s manager (and current Cards skipper) Tony La Russa was on the juice when he won the Manager of the Year award in 1992.

Canseco’s first book, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ’Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big became a best seller in 2005 when he made claims that half of major league players were taking performance-enhancing drugs. Canseco himself is an admitted steroid user whose name was mentioned more than 100 times in the Mitchell Report last month.

“I’m surprised Tony wasn’t implicated in the Mitchell Report,” the site has Canseco saying. “Everybody knows he was on steroids in the early ’90’s. He made some amazing managerial decisions that year. I’ve never seen anything like it. He was making a mockery of the game.”

Unreal (as you might guess) is hardly shocked, given La Russa’s love of experimentation.

The Brushback has La Russa admitting that he used human growth hormone “for a very short time” in the early 90s in order to recover from an injury.

Huh. So that explains the predilection for batting the pitcher eighth.

The Brushback’s St. Louis coverage isn’t limited to the La Russa scoop. There’s also a brief piece about how the Rams’ last-minute hopes of “backing into the playoffs” with a 3-13 record were dashed.

Quoth Rams head coach Scott Linehan: “Hopefully next year we’ll control our own destiny by not being in dead last place for the entire season.”

-Unreal