DR. JUICE.(Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big)(Book Review)

Behold the Chemist, Jose Canseco: former American League M.V.P., Madonna's onetime "bat boy," best-selling author, peerless narcissist. He is forty, and retired from baseball, although you wouldn't know it to look at his arms and chest, still oversized and threatening the seams on his tight-fitting shirt. He is very tan, as always, his hair slick, short on the sides and long--not quite a mullet--in the back. He's got his shades on. If he must say so, he looks good.

Canseco's chemistry expertise, of course, involves steroids--that persistent thorn in baseball's hide--and, while some of the players he has depicted as dopers are now beginning spring training, dogged by reporters, Jose is happily out on book tour, promoting "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big," which, owing to the timing, the naming of names, and perhaps those dashing looks, just debuted at No. 1 on the Times nonfiction chart. Last week, he dropped by the Rockefeller Center Barnes & Noble to sign copies, and was greeted by hundreds of fans. Should the Yankees' Jason Giambi (once "the most obvious juicer in the game," according to Canseco) falter at the start of this coming season, he might consider the alternate path of his old teammate "Josey."

Evidently, a great many baseball fans remain confused about where Canseco stands on the steroid issue. Two middle-school health teachers from Long Island, for instance, were at the front of the line. One had tried using his teacher's discount card when paying for the book (three copies), and was denied. ("They said it has to be school-related," he recalled. "Well, I'm a health teacher!")

Let's be clear: Jose Canseco wants more steroid use in baseball (and elsewhere, for that matter), not less. In "Juiced," he writes, "What I've learned is that there is a way to stop the aging process, or at least slow it down by 90 percent. If you stick with a program of good nutrition and a consistent approach to fitness, and know the right mix of steroids and growth hormone to take, you should be the same at fifty years old as you are at thirty."

Inside the bookstore, the throngs paid their respects. "Good luck to you," one pale, gray-haired man said. "I think you're doing something important, especially for the young people."

"I'm sure you tell the truth--that's all I have to say," another man shouted.

"You should read it first," Canseco replied, ...