Jose Canseco Accidentally Shot Off His Middle Finger

Associated Press

Former MLB slugger, current Twitter entertainer, and general headline maker Jose Canseco is in the news again for a rather unpleasant bit of business. Canseco, who played a season with the Boston Red Sox, shot himself in the left hand while cleaning his gun. His fiancée, Leila Knight, told TMZ the bullet “ripped through the middle finger on his left hand.”

TMZ reports:

[Canseco] was sitting at a table in their home cleaning the gun when it went off. [Knight] says he didn’t know it was loaded—and the shot ripped through the middle finger on his left hand.

Leila tells us 50-year-old Canseco is in surgery right now as doctors desperately try to save what’s left of the finger. She says the bullet tore through the bottom part of the finger and doctors have already said he’ll never have full use of it again … even under the best of circumstances.

So, yikes, that’s pretty terrible, if not all that surprising. After all, when you’ve boxed with Danny Bonaduce, competed on the Celebrity Apprentice, run for mayor of Toronto despite lack of Canadian citizenship, and written some confusing political commentary for Vice magazine (“Control the people, not the guns“) … appearances in the headlines are to be expected every now and then.

And while his consistently strange antics mean that there’s a bit of an irreverent tenor to the conversation about his accident, it’s a pretty unhappy event. At least he doesn’t make his bones in professional athletics anymore, so while it may limit his ability to play Mozart sonatas or make obscene gestures, we doubt it’ll hold him back too much. Still, as his fiancée writes on his Twitter account, pray for Jose Canseco’s finger.

This is Leila . Thank you all for the kind words and prayers . Jose is in still surgery and will be ok. Please pray for his finger !!