Canseco receives top honor from American Turncoat Society

NEW YORK CITY, NY — Former major league slugger José Canseco was honored in a lavish ceremony last night for his selfless, off-the-field work in baseball’s fight against steroids.

Canseco was presented with the prestigious Benedict Arnold Award by the New York-based American Turncoat Society, for his vigorous efforts to shame the sport of baseball, which provided Canseco with a vast fortune and the opportunity to live out his childhood dreams.

“You know, a whole lot of people have bashed me over the last few years for exposing the use of steroids in professional baseball, as well as fingering my friends and ruining some of their lives,” Canseco said in his acceptance speech. “A lot of people say that I am bitter and ungrateful towards a sport that has provided me with so much. Others say that I merely wrote my New York Times-bestselling book – Juiced, which ratted out the entire sport – for my own personal and financial gain. Well, in accepting this momentous award, I say to those people, ‘So what?!’”

Canseco’s speech was delivered to a gathering of luminaries that included past recipients of the Benedict Arnold Award – Gennifer Flowers, Lando Calrissian and Judas Iscariot, among others. In addition to a statuette trophy featuring Benedict Arnold’s likeness, winners of the award receive a replica British Army jacket from the Revolutionary War period.

“There was some question over whether Canseco was the right choice, given that Juiced was actually released previous to 2007, but in the end we decided that José is essentially responsible for what became a steroid-obsessed year in baseball and really American society overall,” said Andrew Sarachnik, Board Chairman of the Turncoat Society. “We had considered Kirk Radomski, but the general feeling was that if we start honoring every drug dealer who turns federal evidence, we’ll have to give out thousands of this award each year. In the end, Canseco was awarded for being the first of many rats in the steroid investigation. Also, obviously, the biggest and most ‘roided-up of these informants – there’s some symbolic symmetry in that.”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!