NO ORDINARY JOE

A contract clause stipulates that Jose Canseco will be bronzed wearing a Tampa Bay Devil Ray cap if elected to the Hall of Fame.

Better to put these things in writing, considering that Canseco has worn the cap of four different organizations in the last four years and six in all.

Canseco, of course, has taken a colorful and circuitous route to the outskirts of Cooperstown, as represented by his 409 home runs.

If he hits 500, he becomes semiautomatic, which may be a bad way to put it for someone once arrested on a gun charge.

Of the 15 players to reach the 500 plateau, 14 are in the Hall.

The 15th, Eddie Murray, doesn’t go before the electorate he consistently snubbed until 2002.

Canseco’s itinerary began as Mark McGwire’s Bash Brother in Oakland. It has featured stops in Madonna’s apartment, a couple of jail cells, divorce court and a therapist’s office or two.

As recently as a year ago, Canseco probably wouldn’t have been thought of in terms of the Hall, but he reestablished his career with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1998, slugging 46 home runs and driving in 107 runs, and he has picked up where he left off in his first seven weeks as a Devil Ray. He is second in the American League with 13 homers and has 29 runs batted in.

Canseco hadn’t hit 40 or more homers in a season since 1991.

“It’s strictly about health,” he said of his robust production in Toronto and Tampa. “Nothing else is different. I’m playing every day, seeing what I can do over time. I’m healthy and happy. If I strike out four times or hit four home runs, I’m taking it one step at a time. I’ll be 35 in July, but I could easily play until I’m 45. The question is, will I want to?”

Canseco was sitting in the dugout at Edison Field before a weekend game with the Angels.

He consented to a 10-minute interview after keeping two reporters cooling their heels in the Tampa clubhouse for more than two hours while he went through his preparations, including the requisite calls on his cellular.

He had also chatted with this reporter about his life and times in Florida during spring training. And it is clear the Hall is on his mind.

Third among active home run hitters behind McGwire and Barry Bonds, Canseco believes it is only a matter of time until he reaches the 500 plateau, maybe 600.

“Who doesn’t want to end their career with that kind of bang?” he said of the Hall. “But you’d like to do it in the right way, a quiet way. I don’t need any more notoriety. You’d like to be looked on as a low-key kind of guy. You don’t want anything to take away from what you did on the field.”

It may be too late, of course, for Canseco to be looked on as a low-key kind of guy. The spotlight found him in his early 20s and hasn’t left. He may not travel at 100 mph anymore, taking police on high-speed chases through the Oakland hills or playing bumper cars with his first wife--he in his Porsche, she in her BMW--but the perception remains, the turbulence still festering.

A few weeks after his new family was profiled in Sports Illustrated, he has filed for divorce, agreeing to share custody of his 2-year-old daughter, Josie. The separation was amicable, although his wife, Jessica, had called police during a domestic dispute in 1997. Canseco ultimately went through counseling as part of a settlement with the district attorney.

Canseco understands where he has been, what he has done. He has spent hours in therapy, quiet hotel nights in tears attempting to come to grips with it. The resume is there, but does it have to be reprinted in every article?

“I accept responsibility for my mistakes, but how long do I have to pay for them?” he said this spring. “I’d love to be able to go back and change things, but hopefully I’ve learned from the mistakes. I mean, I’d go nuts if I listened to what everyone says about me, but there does seem to be a double standard.”

Even the Devil Rays listened and wondered. General Manager Chuck LaMar acknowledges that he might have signed Canseco for the home state Devil Rays before their inaugural season of 1998, but he wanted to make sure that his problems were behind him. Even now, Canseco has been signed cautiously. He can make $16.4 million over three years, but only $2 million is guaranteed, and the club holds an option on the second and third years.

Why the Blue Jays didn’t re-sign him is a mystery to Canseco.

He wanted $28 million for four years and they offered $3 million for one with no explanation.

“I’m still waiting for an answer,” he said. “You hit 46 homers, drive in 107 runs, play in 151 games, work with the younger players as every veteran should, and they don’t want you? I have to surmise that I could have had 80 homers at the All-Star break and they still wouldn’t have wanted me. I did everything expected of me, but it’s a business. They just didn’t need the part any more.”

Canseco is a 6-foot-4, 250-pound luxury. He has value only in the American League, where he can serve as a designated hitter. He was baseball’s best player when he hit 42 homers and stole 40 bases in 1988, but he estimates that he has lost three years to the physical and psychological disabled list.

“It’s not only the time you’re out,” he said, “but it’s the time you need to get back to where you were.”

Bash Brother McGwire has spent similar time on the disabled list and is also working on 500 homers, but the swaggering Canseco considers McGwire an android who is still capable of hitting 800 or 900 homers--”Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron couldn’t carry his jock”--if he remains injury-free. Canseco said he was excited and dazzled by McGwire’s onslaught last year and that he considers 70 a “disgusting” number that won’t soon be challenged.

Would Canseco like the opportunity?

“No way,” he said. “I don’t need the attention. I don’t need the interference in my privacy. I don’t need to relive my past, considering what I’ve been through. I hit a quiet 46 last year and I hope to hit a quiet 46 again.”

But if he got hot and mounted a second-half challenge of the McGwire record? Canseco smiled and said, “I’d probably just stop hitting them. That would be a story, wouldn’t it?”

The stories would already fill a book. He hopes to shield his daughter from the type of celebrity that has accompanied his career. No way, he says, when asked if he would want her to be famous. It is not widely known, but the softer, gentler Canseco wanted kids so badly when younger that he would often spend Christmas Eve in the children’s ward of a hospital, distributing gifts and paying for surgeries.

Some acts are worthy of being bronzed, whether a complex career of gold and tarnish takes Canseco to Cooperstown or not.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

More Muscle

Jose Canseco, 35, is on pace for the best home run percentage of his career this season and has been on a home run tear since 1998. A look at his at-bats per home run each year of his career:

1999: 10.2

1998: 12.7

1997: 16.9

1996: 12.9

1995: 16.5

1994: 13.8

1993: 23.1

1992: 16.9

1991: 13.0

1990: 13.0

1989: 13.4

1988: 14.5

1987: 20.3

1986: 18.2

1985: 19.2