Here sits the great baseball sage Jose Canseco, dressed in a black hat and a black motorcycle jacket, slumped in a folding chair in a small room just off the main stage at USC's Bovard Auditorium.
It is Friday night and he is minutes from giving a talk about his life in baseball: the rise and fall, the steroids, his knowledge of who injected what and his speculation about current players -- even, it turns out, Manny Ramirez.
A giant video screen plays highlights of Canseco's longest home runs and along with those images we hear an announcer's voice. "There he is!" the voice booms, "baseball's most imposing figure!"
"Jeez, I was quite a figure out there," Canseco says, his still-chiseled frame melting into the chair. "What a feeling, crushing that baseball in front of thousands in the stands, millions on TV."
He autographs some baseballs. We talk. He says he's still using testosterone, says he needs it to keep his levels normal after so many years of using. He makes repeated reference to 1998, when he hit 46 home runs for Toronto. He swears that was the one year in 17 seasons that he played drug-free. He had been too depressed about a relationship to think about steroids.
"You did so well in Toronto, why didn't you just quit right there?" I ask.
"I don't know," he says. "I could have. I didn't."
In fact, 1998 has made him reconsider things. After long telling anyone who'd listen that he might not have made the big leagues without steroids, maybe the year in Canada shows he could have become a star without drugs. He holds tight to this new notion.
"I have regrets," he says. "The way people look at my career was compromised by using. Then the whole thing fell apart. . . . I was cut off. Not being able to play at 36. That's how old I was when baseball colluded to keep me out. They were sending a message to all the other players: 'Stop using, or you will be like Jose.' "
Canseco keeps talking, unburdening. He seems tinged with a paranoia that makes him easy to dismiss, except he has so often been right.
"I have nightmares, almost every night. I'm on some team, but they will not let me actually play. The bus leaves without me. . . . "
An agent walks in, says there are only about 40 people in the audience. Maybe 50. Bovard holds 1,235.
