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Bash Brothers: A Legacy Subpoenaed | 
 enlarge | Author: Dale Tafoya
Creator: Fay Vincent
Publisher: Potomac Books Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $13.47
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 738515
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 1597971782
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.3570922
EAN: 9781597971782
ASIN: 1597971782
Publication Date: May 31, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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Product Description
Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco—the Bash Brothers—ushered in a new era of muscle-bound power hitters in baseball in the late 1980s. Suddenly balls were flying out of the parks like never before, and the rest of baseball stood up, took notice, and followed suit. Baseball’s bodybuilding revolution, with its resultant steroid infestation, was here to stay, and many experts today point to these two players as a large reason why.
Author Dale Tafoya has interviewed more than 150 teammates, coaches, scouts, and friends who knew McGwire and Canseco during that era, including former A’s general manager Sandy Alderson, former team president Roy Eisenhardt, former commissioner Fay Vincent, Hall-of-Fame closer Dennis Eckersley, and 2004 Ford C. Frick award-winning legendary broadcaster Lon Simmons. They provide first-person commentary on what living and playing with the larger-than-life duo was like, and relate the shock and awe that followed both players and the team as well.
Tafoya also investigates the players’ pre-Oakland careers, how they exploded upon reaching the majors with the A’s, and what happened when the two moved on. While Canseco has admitted his steroid use, McGwire ducked the question when Congress asked about his use by saying, “I am not here to discuss the past.” Tafoya investigates the claims of each.
The Bash Brothers revolutionized baseball; Tafoya discusses whether it was for better or for worse and paints a colorful portrait of the duo’s rise to popularity and their ensuing exposure and shame. Bash Brothers: A Legacy Subpoenaed is the first book to fully investigate how these two players helped shape baseball for years to come.
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Bash Brothers and beyond July 17, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
McGwire and Canseco were the poster boys for the recent era of performance-enhancing drugs in MLB. Towering home runs blasted by hitters with hulking physiques became the order of the day, with the `Bash Brothers' leading the charge. This book provides an excellent account of their careers while demonstrating the impact they had on the game as a whole.
The amount of research Tafoya has conducted is impressive and the many contributions from former team mates and coaches really enable him to add something new to the ever-growing mound of books and articles on this subject. When first approaching the book, there were three main questions I was hoping to be answered: what really did fuel McGwire and Canseco's incredible power feats? How big an impact did their exploits have on the rest of baseball, both directly and indirectly? And finally, but most importantly, how many people knew what they were up to? All three questions are answered by Tafoya, while leaving plenty of thinking space for the reader to consider the subject further.
The front cover is, for once, quite a good starting point. The images of McGwire and Canseco in mid-swing are juxtaposed by images of their solemn faces at the 2005 Congress hearings. Their stories, from coming through the minors to being Major League stars and their ultimate falls from grace, are certainly good ones to tell.
What makes the book for me though is the way that those individual stories are put into the context of the issue as a whole. Central to this is the fact, made clear in this book if any doubt existed, that there was widespread knowledge within the game of players using performance-enhancing drugs. Nothing was done about it by MLB and, in truth, it has largely been due to the intervention of other bodies (e.g. the criminal investigation of BALCO) that the subject is being looked at now. While it's hard to feel too much sympathy for the likes of the Bash Brothers, we have to remember that they played during a time when MLB didn't have a proper drug-testing programme and there is little evidence that players were discouraged from taking a similar route.
Overall, this is a well-written, detailed book that greatly helps to inform the debate on how we should perceive the so-called `steroids era'.
A Valuable Contribution June 20, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
For those interested in the pedigree, upbringing, and grooming of Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco both in their personal and professional lives, this book is a great wealth of information. A bulk of the book - the first 192 pages - deals with the Bash Brothers through high school, college, the minors, and breaking into the majors before being marketed as "The Bash Brothers" up until 1992. The remainder of the book picks up with the Bash Brothers being quickly reunited in 1997 and the litany of players who started bulking up, hitting record homers, and signing giant contracts. Steroids rumors in baseball slowly gained attention until Canseco's expose Juiced was written in 2005 and MLB was subpoenaed before Congress to testify.
Having grown up with the Bash Brothers and finding them the most exciting players to watch in my lifetime, I appreciated the amount of work the author went through to talk with so many people surrounding them and uncovering details from their personal lives as they made their way to the majors. Canseco is portrayed as having raw talent and explosive power, but a very lazy work ethic. He was frequently being disciplined, getting in trouble with the law, having a hard time with authority, always loved fast cars and women, and always seemed to like to party and have a swagger about him. His father is portrayed as coming down on his sons and yelling at them whenever they failed to perform. McGwire, in the opposite, is portrayed as a shy, kind, well-mannered, well-disciplined person from a well-off family who was very involved in the community and was generally very supportive and encouraging. He married his college sweetheart who was very well liked by the other player's wives.
McGwire and Canseco were never close off of the field and generally didn't share the same interests though they were marketed together and made into national stars as the Bash Brothers. Jose Canseco showed that having muscle actually helped baseball players. Being taboo at the time, the Oakland A's started baseball's first weight training program which would become a norm in baseball over the next decade, transforming the game. Canseco was obsessed with working out and wanted to sculpt his body, seemingly being more interested in body building than baseball, whereas McGwire enjoyed working out every day as a way to unwind.
By the time Canseco was traded from the A's in 1992, he had the reputation of not wanting to work hard or play. He wanted to DH and hit homeruns. Coming off of the worst season of McGwire's career, he returned in 1992 looking like a football player and had a comeback year. He worked out with his brother J.J. in the off season and put on 20 lbs. of muscle, who was a body builder and steroid user.
Eventually McGwire became the game's symbol of power while Canseco found it hard to find to work even after putting up the best numbers of his career in 1998. With so many players getting big and breaking records as well as suspicion of cheating looming, Canseco believes he was blackballed from the game as a liability to MLB who would soon have to pretend to be ignorant of it all to save their public image. He claims to have written Juiced to protect the players from being victimized and blackballed by MLB to protect their image the way he was, wanting the players to side with him against MLB who turned a blind eye to prevalent drug use and encouraged the culture to continue for profit at the players' expense. (Though most see Canseco as being desperate for money and selling trash at the expense of his peers for profit).
The final chapters of the book race through a lot of the events that transpired which exposed illegal drug use in the game and eventually landed some of baseball's biggest stars before Congress, and ends a little too abruptly for my liking. The author rightly mentions Operation Equine (An FBI sting on steroids dealers in the early 1990's) but only a short paragraph's worth. I would have liked him to have pointed out that an FBI informant actually sold McGwire steroids and that the very formula was described in detail as being for "hardcore users." It would have served the book well to mention that the FBI went to MLB in the early 1990's and told them they had a drug problem, naming Canseco as the prime suspect, which elicited little more than an ignored memo sent to clubhouses. This information is important for Canseco's case that MLB knew and endorsed the steroid use at every level, filling ballparks and making the game exciting, and now is attempting to bar and blackball "cheaters" to save their public image. Canseco compares MLB to the mafia, asking players to perjure themselves before Congress and destroy their lives and images for the sake of the game.
Though the book ends mentioning McGwire being snubbed from the Hall of Fame, I would have liked to see more of a discussion on the reasons people believe he should be in and the reasons people believe he should be kept out. I would also like to see more on whether or not Canseco should be appreciated for what he is doing or despised. Lastly, I would have liked to see discussion on whether or not these players should be treated as if they have committed the unforgivable sin or shown a level of grace, given the vitriol spilled at both McGwire and Canseco looks more like an irrational witch hunt than having a reasoned understanding or understandable disappointment. A nice epilogue touching on these issues in the paperback version would make this a five star book for me, but it is still a great and appreciated effort.
In the end, this book is well worth the purchase if you are a fan of McGwire and Canseco.
BUY THIS BOOK! YOU WILL BE GLAD YOU DID ! June 12, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's hard to believe that "Bash Brothers: A Legacy Subpoenaed," is Dale Tafoya's first book because he writes with the polished style and investigative savvy of a seasoned author and journalist. Mr. Tafoya's preocious writing skills may be due to his previous career as an investigative journalist, and "Bash Brothers" is filled with scoops that will impress some journalists while filling others with envy.
I have no interest in sports, but something made me pick up Mr. Tafoya's book, and I was hooked! Normally a slow reader who takes a week or longer to read a book, I consumed "Bash Brothers" in one sitting because Mr. Tafoya's work is such a page-turner.
Sensational but never sensationalistic, candid but never sleazy, "Bash Brothers" is a compelling look at how anabolic steroids and other alleged athletic performance enhancers have corrupted what has been called "America's Favorite Past-Time."
Sadly, after reading Mr. Tafoya's masterful account, pro baseball may no longer be America's favorite anything.
But there's a silver lining to the ugly cloud that permeates not only baseball but so many other sports as well. I hope that Mr. Tafoya's work will serve as a warning for impressionable high school (and even middle school!) students who are tempted to emulate their sports heroes by using illegal steroids. Despite those quacks who claim that steroids do NOT enhance athletic performance or add lean, rippling muscle to their users' physiques, the sad fact is that steroids DO give athletes an (unfair) advantage over their drug-free competitors.
Young people think they are immortal simply because no one their age has died. However, in years to come, Mssrs. Canseco and McQwire may find that for a brief period of glory as baseball superstars, they have blown their livers and end up on a long liver transplant list that by the time it comes for them to get their transplant, they will no longer need one because...they're dead. (Remember Mickey Mantle?)
If you are thinking of sticking a syringe into your hip to improve your athletic prowess, first read "Bash Brothers" and think again. You may decide to toss the hypodermic and its poisonous contents into the trash, where steroids belong. The trash, however, may be full because it already contains the reputations of the Bash Brothers and any hopes they had of landing lucrative product endorsement deals. And forget about the Hall of Fame, unless they're thinking of applying for a janitorial job there.
My disapproval of using chemicals to turbocharge athletic ability does not reflect the ravings of a crank since I am considered a knowledgeable writer on the subject of drug abuse as the author of "The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another," about the two 19th century wars fought between China and Britain when China tried to stop British merchants from importing opium into China because it was devastating Chinese society and its economy. I'm also the author of "Tweakers: How Crystal Meth Is Ravaging Gay America." I am currently writing "Nice People Can Be Addicts Too: The Epidemic of Prescription Pain-killer Abuse."
I would love to get feedback from other readers on the subject of substance abuse. They are invited to email me at FSanello@aol.com. Thank you for hearing me out. I'll get off my soapbox now.
Frank Sanello
 RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "FROM BASH BROTHERS TO "TRASH" BROTHERS!" June 9, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
It's 1988 and Jose Canseco enters the gym. He hasn't lifted weights for two weeks, and yet according to former teammate Dave Parker, "He slid on the bench press and lifted everything in the building." In 1997 San Francisco Giants general manager Brian Sabean told USA Today: "Steroid use wouldn't surprise me. If it gives somebody an edge, guys are going to use it. Look how it's affected other sports. We'd really have our head in the sand if we thought it wasn't here in baseball." In regard to Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, Former Major League Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent was quoted as saying: "Neither one of them were very friendly to me. I would see them on the field and they were kind of distant. Maybe they were a little concerned, I don't know. They weren't very outgoing. Maybe they were worried; THEY KNEW THEY WEREN'T DOING THINGS TERRIBLY RIGHT."
As even the most casual baseball fan knows by now, that the once proud national pastime is indelibly stained from illegal steroid use from the late 80's all the way through current times, as there is still no test that has been approved by the players union for HGH (Human Growth Hormone) even though there is a blood test available. Only a fool would believe that the players really want a level playing field with no drugs if they won't approve this currently available test. So despite the Mitchell Report, Jose Canseco's two books, and the innumerable mea culpa's by current and former players, without any severe penalties, baseball's "higher-ups" still will not take full responsibility for "knowing" what was really going on.
The people who suffer the most are true fans, who grew up memorizing and reciting the "holiest-of-holiest" baseball's statistics and records which were passed from generation to generation, and linked Grandfather's, Father's and Son's with a language that was immune to any generation gap. Hallowed heroes and statistics were thrown to the side of the road like a no-deposit-no-return bottle by "CHEATERS AND PRETENDER'S TO THE THRONE!" This book traces the careers of two of the original and biggest "druggie" CHEATS of our time, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco. The author provides an almost emotionless yet meticulous rendering of their ball playing from high school to college to the minor leagues to the major leagues. The book concludes with the "travesty" at the Congressional hearings on March 17, 2005 which included McGwire looking old and battered and proving he had no "spine", when he said over and over "I'M NOT HERE TO TALK ABOUT THE PAST." And then took the "FIFTH". (Amendment) Rafael Palmeiro wagged his index finger and stated: "I HAVE NEVER USED STEROIDS. PERIOD!" Then a week or two later he was suspended by Major League Baseball for testing positive for steroids. Sammy Sosa suddenly didn't understand English nor could he speak it. Jose Canseco had said more than enough, which was all TRUE in his book "JUICED".
The author, though providing a detailed step by step rendering of Canseco and McGwire's careers, a number of sentences and statements seemed to be missing some needed grammatical improvements and there was one glaring statistical mistake that the author, editor and publisher should be a little embarrassed about. On page 66 it states: "By May 10, Canseco led the Southern League with fifteen home runs, ten RBI's, and a .352 batting average." Anyone with even a limited knowledge of baseball knows that IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE MORE HOME RUNS THAN RBI'S.
The impact that the Canseco/McGwire steroid scandal had on the emotions of true fans, I feel was poetically and sadly stated by another Major League ballplayer, WASHINGTON NATIONALS CATCHER JOHNNY ESTRADA IN 2007:
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"WATCHING THEM BEFORE CONGRESS TOOK ME BACK TO WHEN I WAS AN INNOCENT KID AND ROOTED FOR THE A's. AS MUCH AS YOU DON'T WANT TO BELIEVE IT, YOU KIND OF TAKE A STEP BACK AND REALIZE THEY PROBABLY WERE CHEATING AT THE TIME. NOT ONLY DID THEY CHEAT BASEBALL AND THEMSELVES, THEY CHEATED ALL THE INNOCENT LITTLE KIDS LIKE MYSELF. JOSE CANSECO AND MARK McGWIRE WERE MY HEROES, AND EVEN THOUGH I'M A GROWN MAN, IT HURT TO WATCH THAT."
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