Ron Kittle Worried Someone Will Harm Jose Canseco

When the news broke that Alex Rodriguez had failed a steroid test, my first thought with regards to Jose Canseco was whether he actually knew that A-Rod was juicing, or if he'd just lucked out with an educated guess. I don't want to make any assumptions here, but I'm guessing that of the people that worry about this kind of thing, most of them probably had a similar kind of thought process.

Ron Kittle, who won the 1983 Rookie of the Year while playing for the Chicago White Sox, is not most people. No, instead of wondering what Canseco knows and doesn't know and what Canseco's true motive has been over the past few years as he's attempted to play steroid whistleblower, Kittle is wondering if anyone is going to shoot Canseco. I'm not kidding.

"My first thought was: 'I wonder who's going to be the first one to shoot him,' " Kittle said Monday. "I still think somebody who might have had their life ruined might take vengeance on him. If I were [Canseco], I would think about that.
"That's how I look at things. Maybe it's the wrong way, but I think in [bad] economic times when kids are exposed to it and they get to the big leagues to make the money, they will do [steroids]. But it's the wrong path. It's a quick fix."

Who's going to be the first one to shoot him? What does Kittle think is going to happen, a Caesar-style excecution in front of the House?

I get that players are upset with Canseco for airing all of his dirty laundry in public, but isn't this being just a little dramatic? I mean, it's not like Canseco got the guys he named differently than anyone else. Everyone kind of thought he was full of crap until Mark McGwire suddenly clammed up about steroids and the Mitchell Report came out. If none of that had ever followed Canseco's first book, we'd probably still all think he was full of crap.

Is Canseco a slimy opportunist? Sure. Did he play with the truth in his book to make it more sensaltionalist? Probably. Will someone shoot him for it? No, probably not.