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September 24, 2005
Rafael Palmier-GO
So long, Rafael Palmiero. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
When Palmiero was suspended for steroid use earlier this year, for some reason there was a part of me that wanted to believe in him still. Even when it leaked out that he'd tested positive for Winstrol, which doesn't occur in nature on supplement shelves, I still wanted to believe -- I told myself he was just a ballplayer trying to hang on to his career, and that he might be a decent guy who made a mistake. Then Palmiero kept saying he couldn't tell his side of the story because the agreement between the players' union and Major League Baseball prohibited him from doing so. This was a direct lie; the agreement prevented MLB from revealing details, but Palmiero was free to talk at will. Even with this evidence that Palmiero was a patholigical liar (he hadn't just lied to Congress, but was now lying directly to the fans), I still somehow was holding out the possibility that he might still be something more than a weasel.
But Rafael Palmiero has officially run out of chances in my mind, with this week's news that in an arrogant and dishonorable attempt to get off the hook for his own actions, he tried to throw a teammate under the but. He reported to MLB that Miguel Tejada, the Orioles' shortstop, had given him B-12 shots and implying that those shots might have caused him to test positive for steroids. In other words, "it wasn't my fault, I'm gonna sell out someone I share a clubhouse with, I'm going to try and implicate him in my mess, and I'm going to try and take anyone else down so long as it's not me."
The Orioles have told Palmiero that he is no longer welcome on the team, and so his season is over. More than likely, his career has ended now as well -- few GMs are going to want to take a chance on him, and fewer players will want a teammate like Palmiero. And thus, a career full of Hall of Fame numbers and hall of shame aura has probably come to an end.
Rafael Palmiero: 3,020 hits. 569 home runs. 0 guts.
