What's The Deal With Juan Gone?

Juan Gonzalez has always been one of the more confounding baseball players. The guy won two MVPs, is 34th all time in home runs and was the guy we were certain was going to someday break Hack Wilson's RBI mark. Sure, he was moody and unusual, but not any more so than Albert Belle, who actually didn't self-destruct nearly as dramatically as Gonzalez did. As recently as two years ago, when he was with the Royals, we thought he'd make a triumphant comeback. We didn't think the cliff was that close, or went that far down.

Anyway, some mystery about Gonzalez this week: He has apparently been put on the inactive list of the Long Island Ducks under mysterious circumstances. (He was hitting .300 with a homer for John Rocker's old club, which is nice.) Gonzalez's bio is still on the Ducks' Web site, and we're having a hard time tracking down any more info. That Juan Gonzalez could really collapse so much that we're the only ones who noticed this — as opposed to Jose Canseco's minor league hijinks, which we'll get into later — is just astounding. What happened?

Name Dropping [Kansas City Star]