The following is an excerpt from Ron Darling’s book 108 stitches:
Pimp mode. (That’s Toni in the middle.)
My time in Oakland introduced me to some of the game’s greatest characters, Cassanovas, too. High on both lists was Jose Canseco, who’d already been a perennial All Star and was MVP by the time I joined the club. This was back before the time of steroids tarnished Jose’s reputation– and with it his fellow “Bash Brother” Mark McGwire, who followed Jose’s 1986 Rookie of the Year campaign with one of his own in 1987. The two sluggers were like princes of the Bay Area who could do no wrong in the eyes of the A’s fans, who loved to watch them bash the shit out of the ball, then bash the shit out of each other in celebration each time one of them bashed another of their mammoth home runs.
What a lot of folks forget about Jose Canseco is that he had a twin brother named Ozzie, who briefly played for the A’s as well. I’ll never forget it though–not just because Ozzie was bouncing around the Oakland organization during my time with the club, but because of the particular ways he and his brother bounced…or, guess I should say, because of the particular ways they rolled.
My first wife, Toni, and I stepped into the elevator at the team hotel one evening, just as Jose and Ozzie were stepping off. We greeted each other on the fly, they were in some kind of hurry–off to paint the town Kelly green and gold, I guess.
As the elevator doors closed behind us, Toni looked at me and asked if those two guys were twins.
I said, “Yeah, they’re twins.”
She said, “Well, they both tried to pick me up.”
I said, “Welcome to the big leagues.”
