NEW BRITAIN, Conn. — Michael Montanari, president of the Hartford World Series Club, noted this month’s guest needed no introduction, but just the same he rattled off the list of Cooperstown-worthy achievements.

“… Don’t forget my arrest,” interjected Jose Canseco.

And so unfolded an interesting couple of hours at the VFW Hall Thursday night. The story of baseball, as it was played between 1985 and 2001, the steroid era, is a complicated story, and it cannot be told without Canseco, a Rookie of the Year, MVP, World Champion, founder of the still exclusive 40-40 club, author of 462 home runs and a couple of tell-all books that rocked the game and helped make him, in his own word, a “pariah.”

“I swear to God, you can’t make this (stuff) up,” Canseco said. “… You know, (stuff) happens in baseball, it just happens to happen to me.”

I was around when the Yankees, who had too many DHs already, claimed Canseco on waivers, strictly to block another contender from getting him in August of 2000 and were startled when the Devil Rays said, “he’s yours.” Whatever his reputation and previous controversies, he made the best of awkward circumstances, hit six homers in the last few weeks and charmed a clubhouse that was hard to charm. Joe Torre, appreciative that Canseco volunteered to play the outfield to make the manager’s life easier, kept him on the postseason roster and sent him up to bat against the Mets with the bases juiced (see what I did there?) in the World Series. That time, Josey struck out.

Then as now, Canseco was the kind of guy with whom you’d love to spend an evening in a half-filled bar, listening to his stories, maybe concerned your significant other might be laughing a little too long and knowing full well many of the claims are embellished, if not flat-out fabrications. A Rembrandt of a BS artist, so elite you’d have to admire him.

So Canseco regaled the nearly 200 who came to the World Series Club’s September meeting with plenty of tall tales, some so tall Dan Hurley would have offered them scholarships on the spot.

For instance, I don’t think Canseco, an outfielder, really threw 103 mph when he blew out his elbow in the ridiculous pitching appearance that turned him into a DH the rest of his career. I doubt he ran a 40-yard dash in 4.29 seconds or faster, or at age 60, could hit a softball farther than Aaron Judge could hit a baseball. I do not believe his scoop, that he will be the A’s manager when they move into their new stadium in Vegas in 2029. He didn’t hit .357 with a homer every nine at-bats in his career at Fenway Park — this I could look up — but the truth, .312 with 48 homers in 161 games, is impressive enough.

You get the idea. In a 75-minute Q&A with hardcore Connecticut baseball fans, Canseco pitched a ton of hay, but in each bale there were needles of truth — prickly, uncomfortable truths. The word “hypocrisy” came up a lot.

“I’ve had a problem with Major League Baseball not inducting (players linked to steroids into the Hall of Fame),” Canseco said. “I don’t belong, I just don’t have the stats, but a lot of these players from the PED era, whose stats are just incredible, over 600 home runs, these players have not been inducted into the Hall of Fame. But, I’m going to tell you something. There are five players in the Hall of Fame who tested positive for PEDs and one of them I injected myself. So I do have a problem with Major League Baseball, the Players Association and the writers for not inducting all of them.”

Here, Canseco repeats a claim he posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter on July 29, and it’s likely true, more or less. It has been reported that more than 100 players tested positive during MLB’s “survey testing” in 2003, but these names were never made public per the collective bargaining agreement, only a couple, David Ortiz being one, later leaked. Commissioner Rob Manfred, when Ortiz retired in 2016, said these results were flawed, so some players who made have been suspected or rumored to have juiced, but had no other links to the scandal, were voted in; in fact, I voted for them, Ortiz included.

“I won’t name them,” Canseco said. “But I think you know who they are.”

Someone asked if Barry Bonds, the career home run leader, should be in the Hall of Fame. “Is that a trick question?” Canseco responded.

Canseco repeated the claim he has often made, that 85 to 90% of players were using PEDs in the 1990s. Probably a little high, but it is clear today that use was widespread.

With his massive, muscular build, Canseco was the first player to hit 40 homers and steal 40 bases in 1988, was part of the “Bash Brothers” with Mark McGwire, who hit 583 homers but is not in the Hall, having admitted to steroids use, that led Oakland to three consecutive World Series. Canseco has taken blame, or credit, for introducing steroids into baseball, “educating trainers” and other players. When he could not get a contract at age 36 in 2001, as he believed his last five years were as good as his first five (not quite true, but again close), Canseco is convinced he was “blackballed,” made a scapegoat for the scandal. This motivated him in 2005 to write "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big," a book in which he named names, and its sequel, "Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball" three years later, naming more. Those books were criticized, but not discredited.

“On one shoulder, I had a devil telling me, ‘do no go silently into the night, write a book, tell them your life story, tell everybody what happened,' ” Canseco said. “On the other shoulder, I had an angel saying, ‘forgive and forget, just get away from the game, you really don’t need it.’ I was completely conflicted, didn’t know what to do, and the devil won. … Do I wish I would have never written the book? Yes. Do I wish it would have gone a different way? Yes.”

Canseco said that if baseball had reached out, he could have met with players, told them, “the jig is up, you have to stop,” and he could have cleaned up the game in six months. This, too, can be taken with a grain of salt.

“But they went the route of blackballing me from the game, underestimating my intelligence and how much I love the game of baseball,” Canseco said. “… I am the pariah of baseball for telling the truth.”

The crux of Canseco’s argument is that baseball, suffering from the effects of the long work stoppage in 1994 and '95, turned the other way and profited from the home run records chased and topped by McGwire, Bonds, Sammy Sosa and others between 1998 and 2001. Then those in charge vowed to clean up the game when the outcry became too loud, and player salaries were as out-of-control as their stats. Canseco was teed up with a question about former commissioner Bud Selig being inducted into Cooperstown.

“Part of the hypocrisy,” Canseco said. “… The Hall of Fame is predicated on what? Politics, cherry-picking and hypocrisy.”

By keeping players such as Bonds, Roger Clemens or Manny Ramirez out of the Hall, due to links to steroids, or his friend Pete Rose, who has been barred for gambling while MLB is now in the gambling business, “it diminishes what the Hall of Fame stands for,” Canseco said.

For the record, I am still a voter and I voted for Bonds and Clemens, but will not vote for others linked to PEDs unless until those two get in. The Hall of Fame has the task of telling the story of baseball. The chapter of the steroids era is complicated, should not be ignored and cannot be told without Canseco, maybe the most complicated of all. He’s in the Oakland A’s Hall of Fame now; maybe he will get his moment in Cooperstown, too, someday, accompanied by a good fact-checker.

Anyway, the Hartford World Series Club (worldseriesclub.com), established in 1926, got its money’s worth from Canseco, who hit more homers than any previous guest speaker except for Lou Gehrig, who came in 1937. Canseco didn’t ignore the elephant in the room — he kept buying it beer and shots.

Before dropping the mic to sign autographs, Canseco noted that the popular comic book hero, Captain America, was a skinny kid who was injected with chemicals. Another inconvenient truth, perhaps, but this is what America wanted to see, and often still does.

“The hypocrisy of where we live,” Canseco said. “When you guys go out to the ballpark, you want to see a Captain America, you want to see the big strong guys, long home runs, the circus entertainment, but then when you find out how we got there, ‘oh, it’s no good, it’s a detriment to the game.’ You fans want us to be bigger, faster, stronger, you want to be entertained, you want the super hero. But the super hero comes at a cost.”

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