At the height of his career, Canseco was inarguably baseball's biggest celebrity. He was swarmed by fans everywhere he went, and was once even spotted leaving the apartment of sexy pop-singer Madonna. Several runins with authorities added to his cultivated bad-boy image: he racked up speeding tickets in the Porsches and Lamborghinis he collected, kept a pet cougar at his Miami home, and was once arrested for carrying a loaded semiautomatic pistol. Promoters of a baseball-card show sued him for being a no-show, and Canseco even had a "1-900-234-JOSE" hotline, which cost fans $2 during the first minute and $1 minute thereafter. Through it all Canseco had a problematic relationship with sports journalists, who were awed by his innate talents but put off by his ego. "Canseco is a baseball virtuoso, an athletic flower that blooms once a century," wrote Rick Reilly in Sports Illustrated. "We know this because he mentioned it the other day."
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