Jose Canseco now feels guilty for mentioning players’ names in his book “Juiced”, which focused on the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball.

During the A&E Network’s one-hour documentary “Jose Canseco: The Last Shot,” Canseco said he “regrets mentioning players [as steroid users]. I never realized this was going to blow up and hurt so many people.”

During the program, the 44-year-old Canseco said he “wanted revenge” on Major League Baseball because he believed he had been forced out of the game. The book was his means of getting even, and he named names “to show I was telling the truth” about steroids in baseball, he said.

Canseco last played in 2001 and retired in 2002 with 462 career home runs, a .266 batting average, 1,407 RBIs and 200 stolen bases for eight major league clubs.

Among the names Canseco named in “Juiced” as alleged steroid users were Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa. All three addressed the congressional hearing on steroids, with McGwire’s testimony damaging his chances of being voted into Cooperstown and Palmeiro’s unequivocal denial of steroid use haunting him when he later tested positive and was suspended.

“If I could meet with Mark McGwire and these players, I definitely would apologize to them,” Canseco said, according to the New York Daily News. “They were my friends. I admired them. I respected them.”

What a shocker – Canseco feels guilty for being a rat and throwing players and former teammates under the bus. He sold his soul for a cheap dollar and 15 minutes of fame and now he realizes nobody likes him. The sad thing is that given the opportunity, he would probably do it all again.

Allen Barra of The Wall Street Journal wrote a fantastic article about the steroid problem in the NFL and why fans ignore it while they crucify baseball for the very same issue.

First, there’s the matter of statistics. The argument goes that baseball fans take stats very seriously and thus are spurred to action when performance-enhancing drugs taint the record books, while football fans are much less concerned about steroids and other such substances given that football has no identifiable statistical benchmarks such as Hank Aaron’s 755 career home runs or Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. Only a few players on a team of 22 starters in football really have any stats.

Prof. Yesalis believes the statistical argument to be largely a creation of the media: “I think it’s sportswriters who care about records being broken. I don’t think the average fans really care all that much. They view sports mostly as entertainment.” But Bob Costas disagrees. “I don’t know about the average fan, but judging from the reaction to Barry Bonds’s surpassing Aaron’s home run record, a great many fans do care, and if they don’t think the competition is legitimate, they’re liable to seek their entertainment elsewhere.”

Whether or not most fans care, the fact is that it’s only when players like Bonds achieve certain statistical milestones that the question of performance-enhancing drugs comes into focus; what statistics do we have for offensive linemen in football?

For that matter, who notices offensive or defensive linemen at all? While experts have long acknowledged that linemen (whose average weight has increased by nearly 90 pounds over the past quarter century) are the primary users of bulk-up substances, most fans never get to see the faces of the players down in the trenches. Defensive linemen might not even get their names mentioned more than once or twice a game when they make a spectacular play like a quarterback sack, and offensive linemen almost never get their names announced on TV.

Every baseball fan knew Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, and other star players who testified in congressional hearings, but if even the best-known linemen were to sit in front of the microphone, their staunchest fans might be getting a good look at their faces for the first time.

Do yourself a favor and read the rest of the article, because it goes into how the NFL isn’t under the threat of losing its exemption from antitrust laws like MLB was.

Constantly hammering baseball because of its steroid problem, but giving football a free pass for the same issue might be the most hypocritical thing we fans do right now. And I’m as guilty as anyone. I have no problem chastising Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens because they (supposedly) doped, but when it comes to football, I’ll check my fantasy stats 34 times before I dare look into something even semi-steroid related. And I think that’s because I’m like any red-blooded American – I want to believe that my beloved weekend football is on the up and up when it comes to players using performance-enhancing drugs. But it clearly is not.