on the right area.
But that was part of what got people excited about watching me. People used to say that watching me swing and miss was more entertaining than watching other hitters swing and hit a home run. I was swinging so hard, like there was no tomorrow, and they knew that if I got all of a ball, it would do things they had never seen a baseball do before.
Probably the funniest example of that was a game in Anaheim early in my career. I still have this play on tape. Mike Witt threw me a slider down and away, and I took a big swing and made good contact, but off the bat it looked like a low liner the shortstop, Dick Schofield. He actually jumped up in the air, thinking he was going to catch it, that's how low to the ground it was. But it sailed over his head, and as it headed toward the out field, it just kept rising. I hit it with such good backspin that it hydroplaned like a golf ball, and just rode the wind all the way out of the ballpark. "There's a line drive over short," A's announcer Bill King said over the radio. "It's in the gap! It's gone!"
It was freakish. I ran hard down to first base, thinking it was a line drive just over the shortstop's head, but all of a sudden I saw it go out. "Did that ball really go out?" I asked someone.
I couldn't believe it. That was probably one of the best technical swings I've ever had in my life, and I guess it proved that you can hit a home run that never gets higher than twenty feet off the ground. As I ran the bases, the other players were all giving me shit about it, saying they couldn't believe it went out. We were all laughing. It just goes to show, you never know what you're going to see any one day at the ballpark. I like to think I made people feel that way a lot of times in my career.
As soon as I got back to Miami that off-season, I started thinking about Esther, that half-Cuban, half-Lebanese exotic beauty I had met in February just before I flew out to Arizona for spring training. I was hoping I'd run into her at the Scandinavian Health Club, but no such luck. I was not someone to go out of my way to run after a woman, but this was different. "You remember that girl Esther I met?" I asked a Miami friend.
"You kidding me?" he said. "She's Miss Miami. How could I forget her?"
"Where does she live?"
Lucky for me, he knew Esther's address. I went by her house and introduced myself again and started talking to her. As soon as we started dating, it was all over with. I was crazy in love with her. But the thing was, she was worried about what her father would think of me.
"I can't tell my dad I'm in love with a drug dealer," she told me.
She was serious-she thought I was pushing drugs. After all, I wore expensive clothes; I drove an expensive car; I was big enough that no one would want to mess with me. I had never talked to her about being a professional baseball player. I wasn't big on conversation when there were so many other ways to spend our time together. Esther's father, who had been one of my baseball coaches in junior high school, was not about to let her move in with me unless we were married. Two years later, we had a big ceremony with three or four hundred people. That was the year I hit forty home runs and stole forty bases and was the most valuable player in the American League. The media wanted to get involved. They had helicopters in the air, trying to find us, as if we were a Hollywood couple. It was crazy, which was how things were through most of my marriage to Esther.
Dave Stewart, my teammate with the A's, had bet me that I wouldn't really marry Esther; if he lost, he had to pay for the wedding. So once we announced the date, he started getting nervous-especially as we kept inviting more and more people.
Eventually, I let him off the hook: I only made him pay ten thousand dollars.
6. The Bash Brothers
If Mark McGwire belongs in the Hall of Fame, so does ]ose Canseco. - JOHN WILLIAMS, Slate magazine
Mark McGwire showed up as an
But that was part of what got people excited about watching me. People used to say that watching me swing and miss was more entertaining than watching other hitters swing and hit a home run. I was swinging so hard, like there was no tomorrow, and they knew that if I got all of a ball, it would do things they had never seen a baseball do before.
Probably the funniest example of that was a game in Anaheim early in my career. I still have this play on tape. Mike Witt threw me a slider down and away, and I took a big swing and made good contact, but off the bat it looked like a low liner the shortstop, Dick Schofield. He actually jumped up in the air, thinking he was going to catch it, that's how low to the ground it was. But it sailed over his head, and as it headed toward the out field, it just kept rising. I hit it with such good backspin that it hydroplaned like a golf ball, and just rode the wind all the way out of the ballpark. "There's a line drive over short," A's announcer Bill King said over the radio. "It's in the gap! It's gone!"
It was freakish. I ran hard down to first base, thinking it was a line drive just over the shortstop's head, but all of a sudden I saw it go out. "Did that ball really go out?" I asked someone.
I couldn't believe it. That was probably one of the best technical swings I've ever had in my life, and I guess it proved that you can hit a home run that never gets higher than twenty feet off the ground. As I ran the bases, the other players were all giving me shit about it, saying they couldn't believe it went out. We were all laughing. It just goes to show, you never know what you're going to see any one day at the ballpark. I like to think I made people feel that way a lot of times in my career.
As soon as I got back to Miami that off-season, I started thinking about Esther, that half-Cuban, half-Lebanese exotic beauty I had met in February just before I flew out to Arizona for spring training. I was hoping I'd run into her at the Scandinavian Health Club, but no such luck. I was not someone to go out of my way to run after a woman, but this was different. "You remember that girl Esther I met?" I asked a Miami friend.
"You kidding me?" he said. "She's Miss Miami. How could I forget her?"
"Where does she live?"
Lucky for me, he knew Esther's address. I went by her house and introduced myself again and started talking to her. As soon as we started dating, it was all over with. I was crazy in love with her. But the thing was, she was worried about what her father would think of me.
"I can't tell my dad I'm in love with a drug dealer," she told me.
She was serious-she thought I was pushing drugs. After all, I wore expensive clothes; I drove an expensive car; I was big enough that no one would want to mess with me. I had never talked to her about being a professional baseball player. I wasn't big on conversation when there were so many other ways to spend our time together. Esther's father, who had been one of my baseball coaches in junior high school, was not about to let her move in with me unless we were married. Two years later, we had a big ceremony with three or four hundred people. That was the year I hit forty home runs and stole forty bases and was the most valuable player in the American League. The media wanted to get involved. They had helicopters in the air, trying to find us, as if we were a Hollywood couple. It was crazy, which was how things were through most of my marriage to Esther.
Dave Stewart, my teammate with the A's, had bet me that I wouldn't really marry Esther; if he lost, he had to pay for the wedding. So once we announced the date, he started getting nervous-especially as we kept inviting more and more people.
Eventually, I let him off the hook: I only made him pay ten thousand dollars.
6. The Bash Brothers
If Mark McGwire belongs in the Hall of Fame, so does ]ose Canseco. - JOHN WILLIAMS, Slate magazine
Mark McGwire showed up as an
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