July 14, 2006

Jose Canseco has reportedly shared names of more players who used steroids with investigators looking into the issue for Major League Baseball.

Canseco, who has admitted to using steroids and in his book pointed to other players he says used steroids, talked this week to the Mitchell investigation.

"Until someone like Jose is part of the investigation as an investigator, they aren't going to get much cooperation," Canseco's attorney, Rob Saunooke, told the New York Daily News. "Jose could meet face to face with some of the individuals, use his own friendship with them and knowledge of them and talk with them comfortably. If Jose sits down face to face with you and reminds you of all the good times, then he says, 'It's time for us to come clean with these things.' "

Without providing names, Saunooke told the paper that the former major league slugger added to what he had in the book "from a player participation level, but also managers, trainers, administrators, or people who would have known or been appraised of what was going on."

Last year, Canseco attracted the attention of Congress with an autobiography, "Juiced," that accused several top players, including Rafael Palmeiro, of steroid use. George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, was appointed this year in March by commissioner Bud Selig to head the league's investigation into steroids in the sport.

Canseco's desire to help baseball investigate is unlikely to be met. "The only members of the investigative team are Senator Mitchell and the lawyers assisting him at DLA Piper, and no requests have been made that anyone else currently or formerly associated with baseball investigate on his behalf," Charles Scheeler, one of two lawyers who interviewed Canseco and Saunooke, told the Daily News.

Saunooke also told the Daily News that Canseco was asked about his relationship with convicted steroid dealer Curt Wenzlaff and denied ever receiving steroids from him.

"Jose got all his [steroids] from prescriptions," Saunooke said. "He told them he remembered seeing [Wenzlaff] in the gym, saw him hanging around with Mark McGwire all the time. He knew him from Reggie [Jackson, who let Wenzlaff stay in his Oakland home for a period in the 1980s], and from Mark."

Canseco, a former MVP, recently called baseball the "mafia" and said the sport played favorites with its drug tests. An MLB spokesman called the allegations "complete nonsense" and Selig took -- by his own admission -- a "sarcastic" tone in dismissing Canseco's claims.