Jose Canseco Cuban Baseball Player From Havana

Early life

José Canseco was born on 2 July 1964 in Havana, Cuba. His family was allowed to leave the country in 1965, when he was barely a year old, and settled in the Miami area. He played baseball at Miami Coral Park High School, but did not make the varsity team until his final year. By his last two seasons he had been named most valuable player of the junior varsity side and then of the varsity team. He graduated in 1982.

Career

The Oakland Athletics selected Canseco in the 15th round of the 1982 draft. He worked through the minor leagues, including a stop with the Huntsville Stars in 1985, where long home runs earned him the nickname "Parkway José". That year Baseball America named him its minor league player of the year, and he reached the majors as a September call-up on 2 September 1985.

His first full season, 1986, ended with the American League Rookie of the Year award. The following year, first baseman Mark McGwire joined the Athletics, and the two hitters became known as the "Bash Brothers". In 1988 Canseco promised before the season that he would hit at least 40 home runs and steal at least 40 bases. He kept the promise, becoming the first player in major league history to reach both marks in one season. He finished with 42 home runs, 124 runs batted in and 40 stolen bases, and he was voted the league's Most Valuable Player by a unanimous vote.

Oakland won the 1989 World Series, with Canseco returning from a broken wrist and joining the team after the first half of the schedule. In 1990 he signed a five-year contract that, at the time, made him the highest-paid player in the sport. He won four Silver Slugger awards over his career, three as an outfielder (1988, 1990, 1991) and one as a designated hitter (1998), and he was a six-time All-Star.

On 31 August 1992 the Athletics traded him to the Texas Rangers. He later played for the Boston Red Sox (1995 and 1996), returned to Oakland in 1997, and joined the Toronto Blue Jays in 1998. That season he hit a career-high 46 home runs. He spent 1999 and part of 2000 with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and was their first position player selected for an All-Star Game. In August 2000 he was claimed by the New York Yankees, with whom he earned a second World Series ring. His last major league season was 2001, split between the independent Newark Bears and the Chicago White Sox. His final home run that year was the 462nd of his career. He announced his retirement from the majors on 13 May 2002.

He did not leave the game entirely. Canseco went on to play for a series of independent league teams between 2006 and 2018, including the Fort Worth Cats in 2013, and for a time he also managed. All told, his professional playing days stretched across 36 years, from 1982 to 2018.

Canseco has also appeared on television and in the ring. He was a cast member on The Surreal Life and a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice, and he took part in boxing and mixed martial arts bouts after his playing days, including a 2009 MMA debut. He wrote several columns for Vice in 2012.

In 2005 he published Juiced, a book in which he admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs during his playing career and made claims about their wide use in the sport. A follow-up, Vindicated, came out in 2008.

Recognition

Canseco won the Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award in 1988 and was a two-time World Series champion, with Oakland in 1989 and the Yankees in 2000. In 2007, he received six votes in his first Hall of Fame ballot, short of the share needed to stay on it. In August 2024 he was inducted into the Oakland Athletics Hall of Fame.

Personal life

Canseco was married to Jessica Canseco from 1996 to 1999. He has one child.