Jose Canseco Finger Fallout More Hand Information Than Wanted in Poker Tournament

November 17th, 2014 | by Jason Reynolds

Jose Canseco reported losing a finger during a poker tournament. The finger had already been surgically reattached once before, apparently not by a very good doctor. (Image: Canseco Twitter feed)

Jose Canseco might be a good poker player, or he may be a total fish; we’re not really sure. But one thing is certain: you’ll never want to lose a hand in the same way he has. Canseco told the world that he lost a finger during a recent poker tournament, the same finger that he had previously shot off in a gun-cleaning incident last month.

For those who didn’t follow the original part of the Canseco hand saga, the 50-year-old former baseball player made the news when he shot himself in the hand on October 28.

Canseco was apparently cleaning a gun in his kitchen when he accidentally fired it, shooting himself in a finger. That finger was surgically re-attached soon thereafter. Or maybe it was glued back on from the outcome, we can’t say.

Finger Falls Off at Poker Table

Certainly, that finger wasn’t quite as firmly attached as Canseco may have hoped. In a tweet on Friday, Canseco shocked followers by telling them that it wasn’t just chips that he was throwing into the pot the previous night.

“Ok well I might as well tell you,” Canseco tweeted after a series of more cryptic hints at what had taken place during the tournament. “I was playing in a poker tournament last night and my finger fell off. Someone took a video of it.”

Amazingly, the finger coming loose again may not have been such a surprise to Canseco himself. In a follow-up tweet, he opined that perhaps he never should have tried to save the finger at all.

“My finger should have been amputated from the beginning,” he tweeted. “It was very loose with no bone to connect it. It was also smelling really bad.”

Fickle Finger of Fate

Canseco at first seemed to think that the video was something of a joke, but later saw it, tweeting that his reaction was “OMG.” He also said that the person who took the video called Canseco’s agent in order to sell it to him.

But despite the horror of losing a finger, Canseco made sure to make plenty of jokes about his predicament following the incident.

“I could probably hit a softball further with 9 fingers,” Canseco tweeted on Saturday. “Less weight means more bat speed.”

That wasn’t the end of the jokes, either.

“I put my finger in the freezer anyone want finger appetizers,” a later tweet said. “Or is it finger snacks.”

Canseco also wondered whether finger losses used to be more common in the old days of poker.

“I bet a long time ago you could easily loose a finger a hand or even your life in a poker game if you couldn’t pay up,” he wrote.

Canseco’s Pro Ball Career

Jose Canseco played 17 years in the major leagues, and was one of the most successful sluggers of his era.

Over the course of his career, he hit 462 home runs, and won a World Series as a star of the Oakland Athletics, where he was known as one of the “Bash Brothers,” alongside Mark McGwire. Canseco also spent time playing for the Texas Rangers, Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, Tampa Bay Rays, and New York Yankees before finishing his career with the Chicago White Sox in 2001.

His career was tainted by controversy, however. In his 2005 book “Juiced,” Canseco admitted to having used performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) during his time in baseball, an admission that helped reignite investigations into PED usage in the sport.