Rafael Palmeiro:
An Image Tarnished Forever?

BRYAN ROTH

I’ve been a baseball fan for most of my life, following America’s pastime since I was old enough to understand it. I grew up with Rickey Henderson, Frank Thomas and Rafael Palmeiro in their primes. Maybe that’s why when yesterday’s news regarding Palmeiro was spread across newspapers and the Internet, somewhere inside I was yearning for the Raffy of old.

At 40-years-old, Palmeiro is the seventh and oldest player suspended for steroid use under the new drug policy of Major League Baseball. After almost 20 seasons in the big leagues, everything he’s accomplished — 3,000 hits, 500 home runs and more than 1,800 RBIs — is now tainted. Who knows how long Palmeiro’s been taking steroids, or more importantly, how long has he known he’s been taking them?

He claimed at the March Congressional hearings he had “never used steroids. Period.”

Now he says he’s “never intentionally used steroids. Never. Ever. Period.” No matter what the case, there’s no denying he has used them and the baseball community is worse off for it.

In the post-steroids era, baseball fans have flocked to the natural power of Adam Dunn, Derrek Lee and Andruw Jones. The Texas Rangers are well on pace to eclipse the single season team home run record. Now what are people going to think of one of the greatest hitters of all-time?

On of the underlying issues with Palmeiro’s test results are with the book that started it all, Jose Canseco’s “Juiced : Wild Times, Rampant 'roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big.” In his tell-all history of the rise of steroids, Canseco claimed he either injected, supplied or knew about power hitters like Jason Giambi, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Palmeiro using the illegal substance.

Before the season began, Giambi all but said he used steroids. Bonds has been linked with the BALCO controversy since the beginning and McGwire did nothing to dispute steroid claims when he represented baseball at hearings with Congress. And now this.

Canseco’s book was panned at first, but how much credibility does it have now? He hasn’t been afraid to talk about how other players use steroids and now it seems like his claims are coming true. Baseball fans cited Canseco’s book as a new wave of “McCarthyism” — trying to out as many as possible as steroid users. But, up until this season, no one knew what kind of weight the book could hold. By no means am I pointing to the book as the “answer” for the whole steroid mess, but it does require a second thought now, if only for the sake of further discussion.

As the biggest name linked to steroids, Palmeiro will certainly be faced with an up-hill battle to reach the Hall of Fame now. In recent weeks sports writers have become polarized in their acceptance of Palmeiro as a Hall candidate. Many cite his elite numbers of 3,000 hits and 500 home runs — a feat that only Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray have accomplished — as his ticket for entrance. Others note the fact he’s never led the league in home runs, RBI or average and never finished higher than fifth in MVP voting as items for keeping him out of a fraternity that allows only the greatest of the great in.

How many more voters will be swayed by this news? It’s hard to tell right away, but when it’s Raffy’s turn to be placed on the ballot, plenty of voters will not doubt see a scarlet “S” next to his name. It’s hard to handle the truth on this one, for me and many baseball fans. Palmeiro has been so good for so long and an ambassador for the game, but
there’s no looking past this news, which will certainly be right up there with everything else he’s accomplished in an illustrious career. Period.

RAY FLOWERS

I recently republished my piece on the efficacy of Rafael Palmeiro’s election to the HOF by comparing his career record to Fred McGriff. Needless to say I remain unconvinced that Raffy should be a HOFamer merely because he was a good player for so long. The HOF isn’t for good players, it’s for great ones, and Raffy’s on-field performance is borderline for inclusion to the Hall in my mind.

That question aside, the latest revelation that Palmeiro tested positive for steroids is a scandal of gigantic proportions (we at AHP have been on the steroid story since 2003: see our drug article index). Sure others have been accused by many of taking the illegal drugs, including Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire’s, and it was McGwire’s pathetic no comment appeals at the Congressional Hearings cast doubt on his own HOF credentials. However there is a HUGE difference between Bonds and McGwire…neither of those sluggers ever tested positive for illegal drugs (despite the fact that Bonds has yet to step on the field this year, he has been tested for steroid use on at least one occasion and passed). Giambi, Bonds, McGwire and Sammy Sosa might have used steroids but none of them was ever caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Palmeiro’s hand is so deep in the cookie jar that he has chocolate covering his whole body like Augustus Gloop, the child who falls into the chocolate river in Willy Wonka.

What makes this situation so unpalatable is the fact that Palmeiro was lauded as the one player to stand up and vociferously pronounce his innocence at the Congressional Hearings. People could look at Palmeiro as someone who was willing to stand on principle and refute claims that that were derogatory in nature. In fact, Palmeiro was widely quoted as the shinning light in baseball’s dark times. The sheer audacity of this man to claim his innocence in light of the most recent revelation is shocking.

"In my opinion, everyone that plays baseball in this era has been tainted," Palmeiro said. "What can you do about it? All I can do is keep playing the game with passion, the way it's supposed to be played, and respect it." March 30, 2005

Some respect he showed for the game.

There is always the chance he will be vindicated in some about face by the testing agency who administered the test or by the admission that some cough medicine he was taking for a cold caused the positive test result (or could it have been his Viagra?). All kidding aside, this man apparently BLATANTLY lied not just to Congress, not just to MLB baseball, and not just to the fans; he lied to the children that look up to him as a model citizen who also happens to be an excellent ballplayer. Shame on you Mr. Palmeiro. At least the others who have apparently “cheated” had the common sense to not definitively state that they had never taken steroids.

I could write a more condemning series of sentences full of vitriolic venom and fire, but what would be the point? I think I’ll close my section of this piece by just letting Mr. Palmeiro speak for himself.

"I would hope for the most part…people would look at me and say, ‘There's a guy who worked his tail off and went about his business and played the game the right way. He left a mark, and then he moved on."

Oh you left your mark Mr. Palmeiro, and like Bryan Roth said above, that mark is a giant Scarlet “S”.

Shame on you.

BRANDON WILSON

The popular point of view will now be to turn our backs on Rafael Palmeiro. There will be tons of things said by people who neither know the facts nor wish to listen to reason regarding the facts. It makes for too much good reading, good radio and good television to let the facts stand in the way. More than 63% of people responding to a Yahoo! poll now believe Raffy should be excluded from the Hall of Fame. Far be it more me to try to inject any intelligence into that mix, but there is another side to this story.

Before I begin, I should make my position clear. First, I live in the Dallas area and consider myself a fan of the Texas Rangers and have been for many years. Having said that, Palmeiro was never my favorite player or anywhere close to it. Truth be told, he is on a list of players that have gotten under my skin. I believe I even one time referred to him as one of the five most selfish players in the game. That statement came as a result of his leaving Texas for Baltimore the first time which came about when he declined a contract offer from the Rangers that ended up being better than what he received from the Orioles. Having said that, I do believe that Palmeiro's numbers are more than good enough to warrant entrance into the Hall of Fame (see my analysis here). Finally, I am cynical enough that my initial reaction to this was like everyone else's and I am predisposed to believe that he did in fact at least try steroids in the past. Having said all of that, there are some things that bother me about the coverage this is receiving.

The first objective (based on the headlines) of many opinion-makers is to target his career accomplishments. First, the failure announced today would have likely been for substances taken this season. There is no evidence that has been presented that he took them in the past. In fact, while I do not own a list of the players that failed the test in 2003, that list is available enough that if he had failed in 2003 he would have been quickly called out by at least one if not many journalists for his testimony to Congress. Reading between the lines in some of the reports, it is clear that this is the first time he has failed a test.

Second, there has never been any link clearly drawn between steroid usage and performance results. Beyond Jose Canseco's bold claims in an effort to sell a book, where is the evidence that taking these drugs results in either a) more home runs or b) more hits, the two things for which Palmeiro is most known? In fact, in Will Carroll's book "The Juice", he chronicles the struggles of a Quadruple-A player (successful Triple-A player that has not been able to break through) that admitted to taking banned substances over a period of years and never saw the desired results in his power production, despite seeing the desired results in his physique.

Third, where is the evidence in Raffy's physique? There was never the kind of change in Palmeiro's body that many point to with Canseco or Giambi or Bonds, the only three known users of banned substances. In fact, he is a very average looking ballplayer. His home run swing is not labored or muscled up like the swings of Giambi or Canseco or even McGwire (who we know took Andro which is now on the banned list). By all accounts, it is one of the all-time sweet, smooth swings (I am a stat head so I have no idea how "sweet" it is). Like with any other player, and I mean any player, we will probably never know whether he did or did not take steroids over his career.

I think that fact is one that cannot be emphasized enough. Before this year, we assumed all the steroid users were the muscle bound home run hitters. Testing this year has revealed that speedsters and pitchers can also be guilty of using these substances. Moreover, these substances were not banned by baseball for the vast majority of Palmeiro's career. I am much more inclined to believe that if Palmeiro was a user over his career that the number of users is closer to Canseco's estimate than the 5-8% that tested positive in 2003.

My reasoning for putting Palmeiro's numbers up there with anyone is how much better he performed than his contemporaries. His contemporaries all had access to the same substances that Palmeiro is accused of using, if he is just ordinary, why are there not 20 or 30 new members to the 500 HR-3,000 hit club? Another fact well chronicled in "The Juice" is that there are substances and continue to be new substance everyday for which there is no test. The substances called "the clear" that Giambi and Bonds received from Balco was the "designer steroid" THG. THG can now be tested for because a sample of the substance was given to testers by an irate track coach, but there are probably dozens of substance that cannot be detected by baseball's testing program. Assuming Palmeiro was a user with a reasonable amount of intelligence and a large amount of money why would he not take one of these drugs that cannot be detected? There really is no reason for any athlete that makes millions of dollars to ever fail one of these tests when undetectable steroid substances are available.

Which gets to the question, how can a reasonable person have the gall to give Palmeiro the benefit of the doubt? I do not know if I fall into the category of giving him the benefit of the doubt or not. I already stated that I am predisposed to believe that he has at least tried steroids in the past, but then again, I am not sure it is relevant to his performance and even less relevant to his performance compare to his peers. Here, however, is a scenario that I find plausible.

Being an average guy that got a B in college biology, I believe I would have a very difficult time determining if there was something in an over the counter supplement that I was using had a substances from the banned list in it. I would need a degree in pharmacology to determine what's on the list, much less whether it was in a given supplement or whether a substance in the supplement I was taking would metabolize into a banned substance. We know that the banned substances list does not contain exclusively illegal substances, and while the reports tend to point the other direction, Raffy could have failed this test based on his ingestion of an over the counter supplement. In point of fact, I do not know enough about the banned substances list to tell you whether I have ever taken one or not. I can tell you, as Raffy did today, that I have never intentionally taken one. Have you? How do you know? Prove it! That's what we are asking Raffy to do.

One thing is certain - there is more than enough reasonable doubt for Palmeiro to ever be convicted in a court of law for intentionally ingesting a banned substance. The court of public opinion however does not carry the same burden of proof. In fact, sadly, in the court of public opinion, facts are nuisance rather than a necessity.

JONATHAN LESHANSKI

I sat today listening to sports radio and heard about Palmeiro’s positive test for steroids. I wish I could say I was surprised, but it has been obvious all along that baseball’s steroid policy is a joke. This is just another case in point. Sure there have been rumors all season that some players were cleaning up their act, players like Mike Lowell and Phil Nevin who’ve grossly unperformed so far. And there have been rumors that Jason Giambi has been back on the juice, using an undetectable steroid, perhaps Human Growth Hormone, which has accounted for amazing rebound. It’s hard to know what’s true, but it’s easy to suspect that all the rumors are true.

The fact is that the steroid policy is a sham and it has been since its enactment. Sure it’s better than the lack of policy that MLB has had for oh so many years, but it’s so full of loopholes and ways to avoid a positive test that it’s amazing that anyone is ever caught.

But someone was. Someone big. Not the marginal type of player that has been caught in the past, but a future Hall of Famer. Not a Hall of Fame candidate but someone who was a lock for the hall based on his numbers. That’s huge; it’s evidence of the failure of the much ballyhooed plan that MLB put forth to dazzle Congress with their intention to end the use of performance enhancing drugs.

In that aspect it’s a failure. Of course that was inevitable when it came to a policy that depends on analysis of urine and a number of “Random” tests that major league baseball refused to quantify to the public. Once again the powers that be in baseball were willing to allow loopholes for the stars to slip through. Not only were the tests easy enough to avoid, but baseball didn’t even make a pretense of testing for those drugs which couldn’t be detected in urine.

The truth has been exposed in a man we all wanted to admire, Raffy Palmeiro who stood in front of Congress just months ago and swore he had “Never used steroids, Period.” Sorry Raffy, but your credibility just went out the window and with it you dragged the credibility of every other major leaguer, from Curt Schilling who also spoke out about this scourge to Alex Sanchez who claimed his positive test was due to an over the counter medication. Baseball’s owners, Commissioner and players have been lying to us, misleading us and pretending that they’d ensure that the game was on the level.

Its’ not the blow to the game that the Black Sox Scandal was, but it’s a blow to our belief in its integrity and in both the owners and players union. It also casts doubts upon their ability to govern this game as a trust for the American public. Instead it exposes an ugly truth; baseball is not the national pastime, at least not as far as honesty is involved. It’s a business, a business that has become far more concerned with spin as opposed to substance. Palmeiro has been caught, but only the naive believe that he’s the only star using steroids. He’s simply the only name clumsy enough to be caught by using a detectable steroid under the current system of testing.

If the fans are skeptical of all of the big sluggers of the modern time they have a right to be. Mark McGwire all but admitted he used steroids, Jason Giambi did - and may be doing so again, and there is suggestive evidence, including several cases of testicular and other cancers which may point to a problem which has gone on for quite a few years. Baseball is interested in pumping offense, no matter what. Owners or at least the commissioner doesn’t believe that low scoring pitcher’s duels holds interest for the modern fan - and that’s not just true in baseball, but in hockey, basketball and football too where points are far more valued than defense.

Baseball is currently in the greatest offensive era in the history of the sport, and one of those reasons was found in the urine of Rafael Palmeiro, and I believe, as many do, that he is just the tip of the iceberg.

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