If anyone knows the story about the little boy who cried wolf, then any baseball purist could sympathize with Jose Canseco on some level.

For those that don’t know, Canseco was a hard-hitting outfielder for several teams during his major league career (including the World Champion Boston Red Sox), and admitted to using steroids in his book, “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big.” Though I have not had the opportunity to read the book, I’ve done some skimming, and a lot of what the man is saying makes sense. Granted, you have to sift through a lot of egocentrism to find these “truths,” but they are there.

Coincidentally (or not coincidentally, depending on your perspective), a can of worms has exploded out of Major League Baseball in regard to steroid use around the same time the aforementioned book hit the newsstands. It was discovered that Jason Giambi told a federal grand jury in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative steroids case that he took steroids. Shortly thereafter, it was discovered that Barry Bonds, of home run record fame, unknowingly took a steroid called “the clear” for his arthritis.

More information came out after the book hit the bestseller list. In it, Canseco contends that he and Mark McGwire injected each other with steroids as teammates. It was later discussed in numerous media outlets that McGwire’s use of androstenedione was simply a red herring so no one would think to propose steroids as the origin of his edge. In retrospect, one could even make the same argument for Sammy Sosa and his admittance of using creatine during the regular season; still, it was McGwire who hit 70 bombs, not Sosa.

In addition, it was McGwire’s name that was mentioned repeatedly during a federal steroids investigation in the early 1990s, according to an article in Sunday’s New York Daily News. Fittingly, McGwire was among the seven baseball players subpoenaed by Congress to answer questions about steroid use, along with Sosa, Giambi and Canseco. Canseco has said he will tell the jury everything they need to know if he is granted immunity.

Naysayers will say this isn’t about steroid use, or fixing the game of baseball; it is all about Canseco. The man has relished the spotlight since he first stepped onto the scene in Oakland, becoming the first player in Major League history to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in the same season. The man has a rap sheet of infractions longer than one of Brian Grant’s extensions, and he was miffed at being “blackballed” by baseball as he pursued 500 career home runs. Heck, when he was on house arrest, he charged several thousand dollars to people so he could grace them with his presence for a day. Not exactly the stuff that makes up a stand-up character.

So is this all about Jose? Probably. Does any of that matter? Nope, and it’s really not very difficult to disregard the motive: Everybody and their mother knew about steroid use from 1988-2004, but nothing was done about it. Canseco contends that greed prevented owners from putting an end to steroid use. It is a widely accepted fact that the home run race of 1999 put baseball back on the map. If McGwire and Sosa juiced during the summer of 1999, does one really think someone would let the cat out of the bag during such an historic summer? I doubt it.

It’s really easy to overlook some athletic impurities when two men are bringing in millions of dollars in revenue for the sport, or when one man makes a personal mission of smashing the most sacred record in all of baseball, like Barry Bonds is doing in pursuit of Hank Aaron’s home run mark. Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine summed it up best when they said, “Chicks dig the long ball.” On second thought, replace “chicks” with “owners,” and you have a more applicable slogan.

Still, what may be the most humorous aspect of this ordeal is something White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski said in an interview with ESPN: “It’s obvious that this [steroid scandal] is important to our government, and our president.” President Bush was owner of the Texas Rangers when Canseco and Raphael Palmeiro, another ballplayer called to Congress, played for the team. Now he’s advocating for a cleaner national pastime. How about advocating for a way to get our troops out of Iraq? Ahh, but I digress …

Now, Major League Baseball is trying to negotiate and change the names of the players who will be asked in front of Congress, which again proves the validity of Canseco’s accusations. Discredit the man if you please, but it looks like Canseco’s wolf cry was right on target.

DOGGIE BITES: Congratulations to the men’s basketball team, which saw its season end in an 80-57 defeat to the University of Vermont in the America East Championship. It was a tough pill to swallow for the Huskies; a lot of things went wrong for the squad, particularly the officiating.

I have seen some amazing things in my lifetime, but the shoddy officiating that transpired at Patrick Gym could rival one of Nick Patrick’s squeeze jobs when he was officiating in the old WCW. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I was watching a basketball game or a four-way intersection auto accident with the amount of whistles that were being blown in NU’s face. Among them: Bennett Davis getting called for an over-the-back foul when he attempted to rebound a basketball next to the UVM opponent; Marcus Barnes getting called for a foul on T.J. Sorrentine, even though the Catamounts standout guard kicked his legs into his shot and stumbled because of it; and any one of the bogus charge and/or blocking fouls called on Northeastern during the afternoon. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the refs blew the game; however, they seemed to do a masterful job of preventing the visitors from building any momentum during the contest.

– Evans Erilus can be reached at [email protected].