JP

Major League Baseball on Tuesday took a stand against admitted steroids user Jose Canseco, calling the former slugger's allegations that the league might be playing favorites with some big-name players when it comes to positive drug tests "complete nonsense."

Canseco, who last played in the majors for the Chicago White Sox in 2001, returned to professional baseball with the independent San Diego Surf Dawgs on Monday in Chico, Calif. Before the game, he made critical comments about how baseball officials are handling the new, stricter steroids policy and said a "cleanup" in the commissioner's office is needed.

Major League Baseball initially declined to react to Canseco's latest diatribe, in which he called baseball the "mafia" and suggested the sport isn't interested in knowing the truth about some star players' use of performance-enhancing drugs. But, on Tuesday, the league strongly denied Canseco's statements.

"His allegations are complete nonsense," spokesman Rich Levin told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

"The policy sounds great, but that's not the problem," Canseco said Monday. "There are major problems not with the policies but the individuals who are instituting this policy. For example, and this is theoretical, if Roger Clemens gets tested and he gets tested positive and it comes back, what do these individuals do with this policy? I think it's going to depend on a case-to-case, player-to-player basis."

Canseco's return - he went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts and got hit by a pitch - comes some 16 months after he attracted the attention of Congress with an autobiography, "Juiced," that accused several top players of steroid use. Those accused included fellow Cuban Rafael Palmeiro, who was suspended on Aug. 1 last season for violating baseball's new steroids policy and claimed he didn't know how the drug got in his body.

In a 2005 interview on the CBS television show "60 Minutes," Canseco said he injected Palmeiro with steroids. Palmeiro is now out of baseball.

Canseco accused baseball of cutting Palmeiro a deal to testify against him, saying MLB then went ahead and leaked Palmeiro's positive test out of fear that Congress would find out.

"I know what I know," said Canseco, who turned 42 on Sunday. "The reason why I wrote this book is to fight Major League Baseball. I feel one person can make a difference. I feel one person can change the world. I want Major League Baseball to know I'm not going away that easy."

Said Levin, "The stuff about Palmeiro is complete fabrication."