The Bobblehead Project: Home run by Jose Canseco's head

The Bobblehead Project marches on with a rendering of Jose Canseco's most infamous home run 'assist.'

By Dayn Perry

Mar 7, 2013 at 6:46 pm ET • 1 min read

The Bobblehead Project -- your friend and mine -- marches on! What delights will this episode bring us? Read on.

When you look at what happened in the clinically detached language of the box score, it looks pretty ordinary:

Heck, the name "Jose Canseco" is nowhere to be found. But if not for Jose Canseco -- if not for the belfry of Jose Canseco -- then that home run never happens.

The particulars: Leading off the bottom the fourth inning of a Rangers-Indians game on May 26, 1993, Cleveland DH Carlos Martinez lofted a fly ball to deep right-center field. Canseco, playing right that day, had a bead on it until the warning track, but then he lost track of Martinez's drive.

Had Canseco not lost it in the sun or the clouds or the haze of weighty contemplation, it would've settled into his glove as nothing more than a loud out. Had Canseco still lost track of it but not been subject to cosmic disfavor, then it probably would've landed at the base of the wall for a double. Instead, the ball bounded off the top of Canseco's head -- yes, his head, becapped and swollen with grand ideas -- and flopped over the wall for a home run (grainy video evidence!). The Rangers would go on to lose the game by a score of 7-6.

To summarize: Jose Canseco, Jose Canseo's head, home run.

And now for the big reveal …

We've seen nothing like it, before or since. And please do admire the hairstyle, in addition to the mounting angst etched upon his face.

Unfortunately for Mr. Canseco, things would get worse. Three days after having a homer ricochet off his coconut, Canseco, for reasons sufficient unto himself, begged his way onto the mound, where he promptly tore elbow ligaments, thus necessitating season-ending Tommy John surgery.

Years later, he would blow the lid off baseball's steroid scandal and then become one of the leading self-parodies in the history of self-parodies. At some point, he may or may not have married Darva Conger. If nothing else, it feels like he should've married Darva Conger.

On May 26, 1993, though, Canseco gave us a gift that not even time and tide can diminish.