Newsday [has] obtained a copy of [Jose] Canseco's new book, "Vindicated," and while Canseco didn't flat-out accuse A-Rod of using illegal performance-enhancing drugs, he did write that he introduced the Yankees' third baseman to a steroids dealer - after A-Rod had wondered where a person would go to find steroids if one wanted them. Canseco also accused A-Rod of coveting Canseco's former wife, Jessica, before Rodriguez married his wife, Cynthia.

According to the new book, in "the latter half of the 1990s" A-Rod came to Canseco's Florida home and began working out - and ogling Jessica Canseco. Canseco wrote that A-Rod telephoned Jessica Canseco repeatedly. "I'm not a jealous man," Canseco wrote, "but I could see that A-Rod, a bachelor at that time, was jonesing for my wife." Canseco closed the A-Rod section of his book with this passage: "So A-Rod, if you're reading this book, and if I'm not getting through to you, let's get clear on one thing: I hate your [fucking] guts."

See? This just strengthens the case Sox fans have been making against ARod and Yankee fans have been trying to deny for four years now: Alex Rodrigruez is a detriment to a ball club. Period. Baseball is more than about numbers. It's about team. It's about cohesiveness. It's about staying away from your teammate's wife no matter how bad you want to boink her because you've got to put the ballclub ahead of the needs of your own penis. Bill James doesn't have a stat for that, but it's what makes a champion.

If you respect the game... and let's face it, ARod doesn't... there's certain things you can do and certain things you can't. You can juice. You can doctor a ball. You can throw a little chin music. But you can't yell "I got it!" on the basepaths to mess up an infielder and you can't have a teammate introduce you to a steroid supplier then thank him by trying to nail his wife. It's one of those unwritten rules. Jose Canseco lived by the code. "You inject my ass, I'll inject yours." If ARod had that kind honor, he'd have five rings by now.

P.S. Jessica Canseco is becoming arguably the most accomplished ballplayer wife of all time. She not only wrote her own book, Juicy: Confessions of a Former Baseball Wife in which she says Jose's manhood "didn't look like any wiener I'd ever seen before" and 'roids left him with shrunken testicles, she's also posed for Playboy (NSFW) and starred in the epic film "Gettin' It." And of course she compared her juggs (NSFW) with Debbie Clemens' at the infamous Canseco Steroid Talk Family Cookout. You can see why ARod would be drawn to such an accomplished woman.