What should we think about Rafael Palmeiro?

Now that Rafael Palmeiro has been caught using steroids we have to wonder about whether his career was legitimate or not. He’s a Hall of Famer if his numbers are mostly untainted. Whatever the case may be he needs to tell the truth, both for his own sake and for that of the general public.When Rafael Palmeiro collected his 3000th hit on Friday, July 15th, he became only the fourth member of the 3000-hit, 500-homer club, joining Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray. Those numbers would have likely made him a first ballot Hall of Famer.

Now the legitimacy of those statistics has been called into question with the news that he failed a random drug test. The question now is how to judge Rafael Palmeiro and his career, which looked stellar until that announcement.

For this highly respected veteran of the Baltimore Orioles hit at least 38 home runs nine years in a row, achieving a high of 47 twice. He has been the epitome of consistency and has always owned a smooth swing. He has been a truly fearsome hitter since 1993. Arguments that he should not make the Hall of Fame because he made only four All-Star teams are simply foolish. Such a dangerous hitter cannot be denied admittance to the Hall of Fame over a trifle of an issue like that.

His career pattern does raise some eyebrows, though. His power streak came in 1995 through 2003 at ages 30 through 38. He never hit more than 14 homers in a season before he was 26 years old and only once hit more than 26 home runs before he was 30 (he hit 37 in 1993 at age 28). That is not normal for an older athlete.

Compare Palmeiro to Will Clark. They were teammates at Mississippi State and both went in the first round of the 1985 draft. Clark, however, had his peak from 1987 through 1992 and then declined normally, retiring after the 2000 season. Clark hit more for average and played better defense but had less power, so they were probably about the same value even though they did different things well. In fact, Bill James argues in his Historical Baseball Abstract that Clark was a better player in his prime, though his statistics don’t look it because the hitting wasn’t as big then. How many people would argue that Will Clark is a Hall of Famer?

So Hall of Fame voters will need to find a way to account for Palmeiro’s bizarre value pattern. Did he really improve his swing and find all that power so late in his career all on his own? How much of his power surge is attributable to baseball’s general power surge that occurred across the board in the late 1990s? How much should we adjust for this phenomenon? These are questions best left to the voters who will have had five years of perspective to sort this whole thing out.

But we can only wonder now if his power surge was the result of something more sinister: steroids. If we assume that Palmeiro deliberately took steroids (and it is ludicrous to think that he didn’t know what he was putting into his body), then there are two places in his career where it seems logical that he might have started. He may have started steroids before his power surge, frustrated over an only decent career in which he showed only moderate power. Perhaps steroids allowed him to keep his body in the game as he was entering his thirties. If that is the case, if steroids are responsible for his power surge, Rafael Palmeiro should be banned from the game and thought of as no more than a decent player who took steroids to become great, one of the bulked-up creations of a terrible era in baseball history.

There’s another possibility, however; he might have begun taking steroids last year when he hit a meager .258 with but 23 home runs. Compare that to this year at the time of his suspension when he was batting .280 and on pace to finish with 29 homers. Are we supposed to believe that as his bat was slowing down appreciably, he suddenly became rejuvenated? Or should we shrug off his poor 2004 as a down year, an aberration, and conclude that perhaps his pursuit of hallowed statistics revitalized him? And can we really believe that he is performing so well at age 40 because of his natural ability? It’s likely few had seriously considered these issues, especially in light of his vehement steroids testimony to Congress in March that made him sound like a white knight, but now who can’t help but wonder.

And so what if he did take steroids for the very first time this year to pull himself together and go out there and get those numbers? Should we no longer consider him for the Hall of Fame if he took steroids for one year far past his prime to get one last shot of glory, even if all of his big hitting years are marred by nothing but the league-wide power surge? Even if his 569 home runs do not mean nearly as much as Harmon Killebrew’s 573 because of the eras they played in, if he got all but one last season of those numbers honestly, he deserves to be in the Hall. If the vast majority of his home runs were tainted, he deserves to be driven out of baseball as a pariah.

The point is that we do not know for certain. We can only make assumptions as long as Palmeiro continues to insist he does not know how the steroid got in his body. His flimsy denials only hurt him, though; no one believes him and in lieu of facts we all assume the worst. If he continues to hide from the truth, no one will consider him for the Hall of Fame because no one will really know if he achieved all that he did on his own. Palmeiro would do better to confess right now. If he admits that he tried steroids for the first time this year, we’ll know that his other numbers are legitimate and a shadow will not descend over him and his Hall chances. People will forgive him. If he’s used steroids since he was 30, well, better to tell the truth than to hide behind the lie. He would become a pariah but the truth is better than suspicion.

Whatever the case is, Rafael Palmeiro needs to be honest with the public. We all need to know the truth about Palmeiro and steroids. We need to know that there is some integrity in baseball. We need Palmeiro to step forward and be a role model to kids as an advocate against steroid use. His steroid testimony was impressive. It will be even better if he can denounce steroids from the perspective of a former user. Palmeiro needs to help himself and the general public by telling the truth.