Being Jose Canseco used to mean never having to say you’re sorry.

Now he says he is, but for all the wrong reasons.

He wants to apologize to Mark McGwire, of all people. Rafael Palmeiro, too, if he can find him.

He says he never should have written a book exposing steroid users in baseball. He wishes they all could still be friends.

“I never realized this was going to blow up as big and hurt so many people,” Canseco says in a new television special that offers a glimpse into just how pathetic his life has become.

“The more I think about it, the more I realize how wrong it was.”

Funny, Canseco didn’t seem to think it was so wrong just a few months ago when he was out on the trail promoting his second tell-all, which, it turns out, didn’t exactly tell all. If he was so conflicted about what he wrote in his first book, why write another one?

Money, of course, which Canseco now seems to be short on. Ego, too, which he’s never been short on.

Just what made Canseco agree to allow cameras from the A&E network to document his life is not really explained, though my guess would be that it stems from his deep-seated need to be the center of attention.

One thing is clear: It’s not a pretty sight.

If the old Canseco made you queasy, the new one is simply sickening.

Tune in if you want to hear Canseco talk about being depressed and wanting to be left alone; watch his meeting with a doctor to try to return his testosterone levels to normal; see his beautiful girlfriend and listen to him say he has no sex drive at all.

Why stop at just an hour-long special? This is so slimy it could become a reality TV hit.

They did miss a few things, like Canseco being charged in federal court in San Diego with a misdemeanor offense of trying to bring a fertility drug across the border from Mexico. His attorney said Canseco was in Tijuana looking for Halloween decorations with a woman and her 7-year-old daughter.

And there’s no footage from his first-round knockout loss to former NFL player Vai Sikahema in a celebrity boxing match in July in Atlantic City that was briefly popular on YouTube.

But there’s enough other stuff to make you watch this train wreck.

I guess we’re supposed to feel sorry for him as he battles to regain his manhood and stay off the steroids he says he used for more than two decades. We’re supposed to empathize as he lies on a bed watching videos of his home runs and worrying about what the long-term effects of his steroids use will be.

It is a pitiful story, that’s for sure. But Canseco is hardly someone to be pitied, considering he has spent much of his adult life involved in one con job after another.

Some might even think he’s a man to be admired, albeit in a sleazy sort of way. It was Canseco, after all, who named names in his book “Juiced” and might have been the only man telling the truth about steroids when he, McGwire, Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa made their infamous appearance before a congressional panel in 2005.

Now he wants to say he’s sorry. But he wants to say it to the wrong people.

He should apologize to baseball fans everywhere because they are the real victims of the con game Canseco and his fellow sluggers played for so long.