Well, the accused stand on the podium and say...I plead the fifth!

Magglio Ordonez and Alex Rodriguez seem unfazed by the allegations in the new book by Jose Canseco.

Alex Rodriguez was mummed about the new book's content and plans to remain that way, according to a NY Times article:

Rodriguez would not address those issues in a two-minute interview with reporters after the game. He said he was not concerned about a potential distraction.

"It's over, as far as I'm concerned," Rodriguez said. "No further comment on the matter. Anything about baseball, I would love to talk about.

"Absolutely nothing else about this."

Rodriguez cares deeply about his image and recently hired Guy Oseary, a talent manager for Madonna and Lenny Kravitz, to be a handler. Yet last season, when his image took a stinging hit, Rodriguez responded with perhaps his finest play.

On May 30, the front page of The New York Post showed a picture of Rodriguez with a woman who was not his wife. The headline screamed "Stray-Rod," and when the Yankees got to Boston two days later, fans derided him by wearing masks of a blonde woman when he came to bat.

But Rodriguez, who hit .235 in May, seemed to use the ridicule as motivation. The Yankees won May 30 — the night Rodriguez shouted to distract a Toronto fielder from catching a pop-up — and began their climb in the standings.


Magglio Ordonez, on his part, questioned the timing of the disclosure:

"All I've got to say about that is that he had a chance in the first book to talk about me," the Tigers rightfielder said in Lakeland, Fla. "So why wait three more years to say what he says?

"There are a lot more important things to worry about. I know a lot of people don't really care. I'm not going to lose any sleep over this."

- I wrote a post about Phil Taylor of Sports Illustrated asking Canseco to drop his pen and stop writing books about this topic.  I do not agree with him.

- Pat Jordan has written a column for Deadspin about his repeated attempts to interview the suddenly media-shy Canseco.

"What interview?" Heidi said. I told her. She said, "Jose's too busy now, he's writing a book, and a movie, about his life." I called Rob. He called Heidi. Then he called me to tell me that he'd "straightened Heidi out." So I called Heidi. She said, "Will it be a cover story?" No. "Then Jose's not interested. He's too busy writing a book, and a movie, about his life." I called Rob. I told him Heidi was not quite "straightened out." He called her. Then I called her. She said, "Will you pay Jose?" No. She said, "Then Jose's not interested. He's too busy writing his..." I said, "I know," and hung up.

During the marathon of my negotiations with Heidi, the Mitchell Report was published. Jose's name figured in the report based on the allegations he had made about steroid use he'd instigated with some of his teammates in his first book, "Juiced." In fact, Jose tried to crash the press conference when Mitchell announced the findings of his report. He was intercepted by security and escorted from the hearings because he didn't have press credentials. But now that Jose was experiencing the last five minutes of his fame before he retired to the anonymity of his future job as an official greeter at a San Fernando Valley Gentleman's Club, a book publisher surfaced like the Loch Ness Monster, and offered to publish Jose's as-yet-written second book, "Vindicated," if it included new revelations about baseball's steroid users. There were coy hints from Jose that he would mention such names as Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez. The publisher agreed to shell out $250,000 for such a tome if it could be written in ten days so it could be published in April, on baseball's opening day. Rob called and asked me if I wanted to write that 70,000 word tome in ten days. I said, "You said it would take six months in the proposal." Rob said, "Ten days." I said, "Rob, I can't write 2,000 words in ten days. I'm not a fucking typist!" Besides, I added, I was still committed to the magazine profile. Rob said, "Call Heidi." I called Heidi. (By now my wife had begun to be suspicious about my whispered telephone conversations with this mysterious Heidi. "Who is this broad?" she said. I shrugged.) Heidi answered the phone. She said, "Jose can't do the interview now because his book publisher doesn't want him to reveal anything that will be in his book." Click. Buzz.

Apparently, there wasn't as much new dirt in Jose's second book as he had promised. Not a day after the press reported that he had signed a contract to write a second book, Jose's ghost writer, a former Sports Illustrated writer, informed the press that he was withdrawing from the project because, after he had reviewed Jose's material, he'd decided that Jose couldn't produce the goods on A Rod's supposed drug use. Jose's publisher then dropped his book and Rob scurried around to do damage control. He claimed that Jose had cancelled the deal with his publisher because he had got a better offer from another publisher that no one in Jose's camp would identify. Then, a third ghost writer (if you can count me as the first) was impressed into Jose's service on the strength of his impeccable writing credentials—a stint at the National Inquirer, and the authorship of O.J. Simpson's sterling effort, "If I Did It," in which Simpson described how he would have killed his wife, Nicole, and Ron Goldman, if he had actually killed them, which he hadn't. "Vindication" was begun, and just as quickly finished, 70,000 words in ten days (I am in awe!), and will be published April 1 by that phantom book publisher, which, it would later be revealed, was to be Simon and Schuster.