Jone Canseco, once the pride of Miami, appears to be losing the luster. Although Canseco always seems off on some half-cocked adventure, one Miami-Dade politician expresses annoyance at the former Bash Brother's juicing exploits. And Commissioner Joe Martinez wants Miami-Dade to banish the Bash Bro. To the Miami Herald:
Has Jose Canseco, the larger-than-life local boy whose indiscretions have almost certainly locked him out of baseball's Hall of Fame, finally committed an error so egregious that even his hometown can't accept it?
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Joe Martinez thinks so. And on Tuesday, Martinez will offer a resolution to permanently remove Canseco's name from the West Miami-Dade street it has swung over for almost two decades.
''I think it's an embarrassment. It runs through my district, right by my office,'' said Martinez, who drives Southwest 16th Street -- aka Jose Canseco Street -- a few times a week.
Martinez motors on Jose Canseco Street, which hopefully isn't as lost as Jose himself.
How did the former Coral Park High star, big league phenom and World Series champ reach this point?
Martinez said it wasn't the brawl in the bar on the beach. It wasn't the public dust-ups with his ex-wife. It wasn't even Canseco's prancing around in a leopard print Speedo on VH1's The Surreal Life.
It was the steroids, said Martinez, a former county police officer.
Canseco said he came clean in his book -- Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big -- telling the world how he, ''The Godfather of Steroids,'' introduced the drug to big league colleagues.
Martinez was not impressed.
''It's the fact that he did it, and he lied for such a long time,'' Martinez said. ``The book was just to make money.''
The vote comes up soon in the county business. Note this isn't the first time the misguided slugger suffered the indignity of being stripped of an honor. High school kids wanted the juiced player off their part of the street.
Though Canseco's name was taken off 10 blocks of Southwest 16th Street in 1997 after students at his old high school, Coral Park, complained to Commissioner Javier Souto, it still spans the road from 102nd to 107th avenues -- in Martinez's district.
Canseco survived an earlier attempt to have his name removed when commissioners failed to adopt a measure in 2003 barring the names of convicted felons from county roads. The move was prompted by Canseco's arrest on a probation violation charge related to the beach brawl.
Maybe Dade County can change the name to 'Roger Clemens Bull-evard'...
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