George Vecsey: Palmeiro Has Thrown Away His Credibility

Orioles' Palmeiro Has Thrown Away His Credibility. Period.
By GEORGE VECSEY
The New York Times
Published: August 2, 2005

With his Wayne Newton mustache and his expensive suit, Rafael Palmeiro oozed sincerity, under oath. He claimed he wanted to distance himself from the accusations of Jose Canseco, sitting right there, who had written that Palmeiro had used steroids when they were teammates in Texas in 1992 and '93.

"I have never used steroids. Period," Palmeiro testified March 17, in front of Congress. "I don't know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never."

Now a new word has crept, and I do mean crept, into Palmeiro's vocabulary. The word is "intentionally." Because Rafael Palmeiro, with his 3,018 hits and 569 home runs, has tested positive for steroids and must sit out a 10-day suspension that sounds more like lifetime suspicion.

Palmeiro has been detected with some form of steroids in his system, in the first year of serious testing after many years of stonewalling by the players union.
The players were finally forced - against the dig-in-your-heels tactics of their union's executive director, Donald Fehr - to undergo tougher testing, and look who got caught: a bona fide candidate for the Baseball Hall of Fame, at least until yesterday.

Other stars like Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi have testified before the grand jury investigating the Balco laboratory in California. Palmeiro got tripped up by a basic steroid test, presumably administered since that March 17 session in Congress.

That day, he came off the best of the five stars, which isn't saying much. Mark McGwire was pathetic. Sammy Sosa hid behind an interpreter. Curt Schilling, not accused of anything, turned unctuously bland when asked about drugs in baseball. And Palmeiro insisted he wanted to set the record straight:
"I am against the use of steroids," Palmeiro said that day. "I don't think athletes should use steroids, and I don't think our kids should use them. That point of view is one, unfortunately, that is not shared by our former colleague, Jose Canseco. Mr. Canseco is an unashamed advocate for increased steroid use by all athletes."

Good grief. Given the current suspension, the brazen Canseco now comes off as the most forthright of that sorry lot.

Palmeiro wants us to believe he has no idea how the foreign substance got into his system. But something good will come out of this, he insisted yesterday. From this shameful day onward, Rafael Palmeiro is volunteering to be an object lesson to children.

"You have to be careful what you're taking," he said, adding that children had to be careful about accepting "supplements" and "vitamins."

Of course they must. Children must also be careful not to stuff beans up their noses or stick their tongues against frozen playground poles in winter. But they probably already know that. Only a ballplayer with 20 years in the major leagues is dumb enough to swallow a bunch of stuff without getting it cleared by a doctor or a pharmacist.

Palmeiro said yesterday that he could not discuss the specifics of his positive test. His logic for why he would never knowingly take steroids was: "Why would I do this in a season when I went before Congress? It makes no sense. I'm not a crazy person. I'm not stupid."

We have all seen prosecutors on "Perry Mason" break into helpless giggles at lines like that.
People cheat. People get caught. People rationalize. Having been around other sports in which drugs and testing are part of the culture - track and field, Olympic cross-country skiing and cycling come to mind - I have come to regard athletes as essentially an addicted subsociety, even worse than the general population because the rewards are so high.

Anybody who believes athletes' bluster and dog-ate-the-homework denials deserves the disillusionment that sets in down the road. I've heard Ben Johnson and Diego Maradona insist there must be some kind of mistake.

Unless Palmeiro can come up with proof that somebody maliciously sprinkled bad stuff on his pancakes, he has to live with the broader shame that now comes from this suspension. Ten days are nothing. Welcome back, Raffy, you're hitting fifth tonight.

But if he retires after this season, Palmeiro will be up for election to the Hall of Fame in five years. He was already facing skepticism as a hitter with excellent career totals who had never dominated his sport.

Aside from the Viagra commercials (exactly how much money can a star possibly need?), this suspension is now the defining moment in Rafael Palmeiro's career - not some hot streak when he carried his team through a September pennant race, not some midnight-hour showdown in late October.

Rafael Palmeiro will forever be known for his positive test, four and a half months after his steadfast denial to Congress. What a coincidence.

E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com