by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

SCOTTSDALE AZ–The Oakland Athletics are in the middle of Spring Training here with dozens of new players; trying to decipher a winning combination that might take them to the promise land in October. After last year, when it looked they were the best team in baseball, until they ran into the Kansas City Royals, this 2015 A’s team is basically a different team. Fernando Abad the excellent Dominican reliever, who last season finished with a 2-4 record but with an excellent 1.57 in a total of 59 games he worked, recently got his US Citizenship and is working as hard as anybody this spring trying to continue his good work for the Bob Melvin Athletics. Abad was four years old when the Oakland A’s won their last World Series in 1989.

In 1989 the A’s had a super team in Spring Training, one that had the most exciting one-two power hitter combo in all of Major Leagues. Jose Canseco hitting third and Mark McGwire clean up. While there is no Canseco in baseball anymore, just a few miles from this park, Mark McGwire is a coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers. It has been over a quarter of a century since the Bash Brothers days with the green and gold, and a lot has happened in the lives of both super stars since them.

Jose Canseco wrote a couple of books exposing the use of steroids in baseball. He confessed to using the substances and to have injected McGwire with the same, while they were both playing for the A’s, Canseco self confessed to his illegal use of steroids. Canseco was totally black-balled from baseball, nobody gave him another opportunity, as a player or as a coach.

It is worth noting that the anabolic steroids were not formally banned by MLB until 2002. McGwire’s use of the substances was prior to 2002. As a matter of fact McGwire broke Roger Maris, single season record for home runs during a season in 1998. Seven years later, after he broke that record, in the year 2005 Mark McGwire appeared with Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro, in front of a congressional hearing. They were subpoenaed, to answer accusations of such steroids use. They all denied their use. McGwire, made a fool of himself, when he said in front of the House committee he was “not there to talk about the past”. Maybe the slugger thought he was there to sign autographs.

It was that same year of 2005 when Jose Canseco wrote his first tell-all book “Juiced” admitting his use of steroids; he also said in that book that the vast majority of players also used them. It might never be proven if the vast majority used them or not, but Canseco’s honest admission and his books telling about others vindicated the slugger, who to this day has never been able to return to the Major Leagues in any capacity.

In 2010 a tearful McGwire confessed to using steroids in an interview with MLB Network’s Bob Costas, but he also said he could hit 70 home runs without steroids, because of his “God-given talent”. So McGwire confessed of using steroids five years after Jose Canseco wrote his first controversial book.

Jose Canseco was always the better player than McGwire. Canseco had power, but also had speed (first 40-40 in MLB history, in 1988 42 home runs and 40 stolen bases) and Canseco was by far the most popular player among Athletics fans and during the time they both played with Oakland, there was no comparison, all across the country it was Jose Canseco who was the man. I covered the 1986 ALL Star Game at the Astrodome in Houston and the two biggest stars in baseball were, Jose Canseco of the Athletics and Daryl Strawberry of the Mets. Because Canseco was more forthcoming that McGwire, when it came to coming out and telling the truth, in my book Jose Canseco will remain to this day a bigger man than McGwire.

Next: Saturday -The Giants visit the Athletics at the new A’S Hohokam Stadium, Mesa.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for the Oakland A’s and the Spanish TV voice for the L.A.Angels and does News and Commentary on http://www.sportsradioservice.com