King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Rafael Palmeiro tests positive. Maybe the post-steroids era hasn't started after all. Plus: Manny Ramirez is happy! And other trade-deadline non-blockbusters.
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Aug. 1, 2005 | Reports of the advent of the post-steroids era may have been premature.
On Monday, Major League baseball announced that its testing program had caught its first star player, Rafael Palmeiro, who in March emphatically denied under oath before Congress that he had ever used steroids.
The Baltimore Orioles slugger has been suspended for 10 days for violating baseball's steroids policy, the commissioner's office said Monday.
Palmeiro, who before this announcement was almost certainly a future Hall of Famer, said in a statement released by the team that he has "never intentionally used steroids," but a grievance he filed was denied and he's agreed to serve the suspension starting Monday.
With home runs down from last year and all six of those previously suspended for steroids being journeymen or marginal players, none of them sluggers, an assumption has taken hold that the age of steroids is over, testing is working and baseball has moved on to a clean era except for a few desperate souls at the margins.
That's a harder assumption to make now that a big-time hitter has come up dirty. Palmeiro had been named in Jose Canseco's controversial book, "Juiced," as a steroid user, but his denials had been plausible enough to those not inclined to believe that everyone who hits a home run now and again is on the dope.
They just got a lot less plausible, and his suspension leads to uncomfortable questions about other players.
Jason Giambi, for example, who admitted in subsequently leaked grand jury testimony that he'd taken steroids, looked awfully slim this spring and produced nothing at the plate for the first half of the season. On the Fourth of July, Giambi woke up hitting .251 with a .407 on-base percentage and a .364 slugging percentage. Since then he's hit .382/.505/1.074 -- that's right, a slugging percentage over 1.000.
Is it not fair to ask whether Giambi -- "intentionally" or not -- started back in on the juice? If not, he should talk to Palmeiro.
In March, Palmeiro was one of several players and former players -- Canseco was another -- who testified about steroids before the House Government Reform Committee. In a moment that was at the time reminiscent of Bill Clinton's statement that he "did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" and now seems more so, Palmeiro pointed at the committee as he said, "I have never used steroids. Period."
In a statement released by the Orioles Monday, Palmeiro said, "I have never intentionally used steroids. Never. Ever. Period."
So he's gone from "never. Period" to "never. Ever. Period." In case you're keeping score.