Hall of Shame
With your accomplishments, you placed yourself in a pantheon that contains only Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Eddie Murray, but may have been aided with performance enhancing drugs. You testified before Congress and stated your innocence before your god and your country, but perhaps perjured yourself with your assertions of innocence. Now you issue weak, equivocal denials regarding your positive test results for steroids.
If a respected, high-profile player like Rafael Palmeiro is willing to put at risk his health, his credibility, his integrity, his Hall of Fame candidacy, what about lower tier players that toil in obscurity to get their shot at fame or a bigger payday?
Major League Baseball’s drug testing policy, as I noted back in January, is still woefully incomplete in comparison to the National Football League and Olympic policies. This might be the best, worst thing to happen to the MLB and the MLBPA, the only thing that would goad them into further collaborative efforts to combat performance enhancing drugs in the sport. The gaping absence of blood tests, the only method to detect human growth hormone, needs to be rectified and the penalties need to be stricter. How many more will fall from their artificially attained heights of glory before there is action taken?
