Jose Can you Extort?

Desperate for money and because he's a piece of scum, José Canseco has allegedly tried to extort money from the Tigers' Magglio Ordóñez. Mags doesn't want to press charges though, so the FBI will not be opening an investigation.

According to a New York Times report Canseco told Ordóñez he would keep him out of his new book, the sequel to "Juiced", if the Tigers' outfielder would invest in a movie project promoted by Canseco. Ordóñez said a friend of Canseco's kept calling him, so he informed Tigers' GM Dave Dombrowski of the matter.

“One of José’s friends was leaving me messages,” Ordóñez said. “I told Dombrowski because I didn’t know why he was calling me.”

“I didn’t want to press charges against him,” Ordóñez said. “I don’t want any problems. He is probably desperate for money. I don’t understand why he is trying to put people down.”

Dombrowski wouldn't comment on the matter, preferring to keep it an internal matter. Canseco denied any involvement in the alleged matter as well as any knowledge of possible FBI involvement. He did admit to calling Ordonez several months back to talk about the book.

Canseco responded to a query as to whether Ordonez, his 2001 White Sox teammate, would be in the book, by pushing the tome. “You are going to have to buy the book to see that,” Canseco told the Times.

It would seem doubtful that any other players would step forward to claim Canseco tried to extort them as well, since most don't want to deal with the steroid issue.

Canseco, meanwhile, is having difficulty getting his new book, "Vindicated", into stores. Last week, Berkley Books, (part of the Penguin Group), dropped the project after feeling it would not be ready by the time the major league baseball season opened. But Simon Spotlight, part of Simon & Schuster, picked up the book and will release it on March 31.

Canseco also lost his ghost-writer Don Yaeger at the end of December, after Yaeger had doubts about Canseco's "facts".

“What he sent me was stuff like, ‘Look at the difference in their bodies;’ there were not a lot of specifics,” Yaeger said.

But now Canseco's kicking it up a notch by hiring Pablo F. Fenjves. Fenjves is the former National Enquirer staffer who ghost-wrote O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It". Maybe José will be able to tie the two books together into some 'roid rage killing spree.