Believability is the issue in Canseco’s latest book

Whoever said everybody has at least one book in them forgot to add that some people should never write another. Jose Canseco is one of those people. The only whistle we can rely on him to blow is his own.

At least with Canseco’s first effort, “Juiced,” there was a trade-off. All that self-serving snitching put cash in his pocket and his mug back on TV, but it also helped shame baseball into acknowledging its own performance-enhancing jones.

Canseco might have seemed miscast as the only honest man in the halls of Congress three years ago, considering he cheated and then lied his way through a 17-year pro career. But that’s the way things work sometimes. Everybody else in the game was so busy covering their tracks that a convicted criminal and shameless publicity hound like Canseco became a voice of authority by default.

It didn’t hurt that more than a few of his claims, inflated as they were, turned out to be true. Apparently, that’s why Canseco decided to title his second book, “Vindicated,” though it’s also possible he did so because “The Greatest Story Ever Told” was already under copyright.

As a rule, the best sequels succeed by going back to the well and digging deeper. But depth is a word you would never have encountered in the same sentence with Canseco until this one.

He didn’t do much homework the last time around, but fortunately the people who put together the Mitchell Report did. So much, in fact, that as author Pat Jordan writes, the report “jogged” all those repressed memories Canseco had tucked away “of the many PED (performance enhancing drug) abusers he’d left out of ‘Juiced.’ ”

Make sure to read Jordan’s exceptional long-form essay on Deadspin.com before you go out and buy the book. It will be the best money you never spent.

Jordan has few peers in the sportswriting business and he spent the past three months trying to interview Canseco for a magazine profile. As a result, he was privy to the goings-on as an increasingly desperate Canseco, his girlfriend-publicist and agent-enabler scrambled to find a writer and publisher. Jordan’s report reads like “The Grifters,” especially the part about Canseco trying to extort $5 million from former White Sox teammate Magglio Ordonez -- first reported by the New York Times -- in exchange for leaving him out of the latest book.

Since Canseco settled on the same ghostwriter who gave us O.J. Simpson’s “If I Did It,” perhaps the title of this book should be “Vindicated: Maybe, Maybe Not.”

In an interview with ABC’s “Nightline,” Canseco is asked about his claim that Alex Rodriguez approached him and asked to be hooked up with a steroids supplier. Beyond identifying the supplier as “Max,” Canseco refuses to provide additional details. Pressed for more, Canseco finally says, “Let’s see how Alex reacts. Let’s see if they all call me a liar again. How’s that for you? Let’s see if all of a sudden they’re going to call me a liar again.”

Ordonez issued a non-denial denial regarding his steroid use. Rodriguez, on the other hand, stated categorically that he had never taken steroids or human growth hormone. Given Canseco’s track record, neither one may get the benefit of the doubt.

Roger Clemens, meanwhile, has been begging for just that since the Mitchell Report was issued without much success, but at least he’s got Canseco on his side. Canseco goes on at some length in the interview about trying to swap information with Clemens about performance-enhancers, but coming away empty-handed every time.

“So do you believe Roger Clemens has used steroids?” he was asked.

“If I were an investigator and I had to go on pure evidence that I have on Roger Clemens or dealt with Roger Clemens over time,” Canseco replied, “then I would say no.”

The most revealing bit of information to come out of all this so far could be something Canseco’s agent told Jordan earlier this month: “Jose is one step from homeless.”

If so, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.