Rafael Palmeiro Opens Up About His Steroid-Tainted Legacy

Performance-enhancing drugs thus far have cost him his place in the Hall of Fame. Next month, he’ll get another shot at making it via the Contemporary Baseball Era ballot.

Rafael Palmeiro became the 19th member of the 500 home run club with this blast against Cleveland righthander Dave Elder on May 11, 2003.

Bob Rosato/Sports Illustrated

Five hundred sixty-nine home runs, 3,020 hits and one positive steroid test. That is the Hall of Fame candidacy of Rafael Palmeiro in one sentence. He gets a second chance Dec. 4. He is one of eight players on the Contemporary Baseball Era ballot—the only one with a failed test on his playing record.

“I was surprised I was on it,” he says of the ballot. “I didn’t do anything intentional to enhance myself. I already had 500 home runs, close to 3,000 hits. I had no reason to cheat.

“[The test] killed my career. It killed my personal life. It killed my friendships. It killed my opportunity to make money. It’s been tough.”

He is infamous for wagging a finger at Congress two months before he flunked the drug test.

“If I could do it over, I would have handled the Congress situation differently,” he says. “The pointing of the finger ... that was not my personality. That was not me. That was the advice I was given.”

By whom?

“My attorneys,” he says. “They guided me with my testimony. They wanted me to be forceful. They wanted me to point a finger. They wanted me to be believable—I don’t know if that’s the right word.

“I wasn’t that way. I wasn’t that outspoken. I wasn’t a troublemaker. I didn’t challenge umpires. I was thrown out of one game in [20] years. … That’s a situation of not knowing how to handle something. Testifying in front of Congress, that’s a scary thought. I did it. I regret it.”

Seventeen years after he wagged that finger and became the first star player to fail a test, and eight years after he was dropped from the writers’ ballot for failing to get 5% support, Palmeiro, 58, will be judged by a 16-person committee next month. The most recent iteration of the committee, in 2019, then known as the Modern Baseball Committee, included six Hall of Fame players, six executives and four media members. Candidates require 12 votes for election. Voters, who have not yet been named, may vote for as few as none and no more than three.

Also on the ballot are Albert Belle, Fred McGriff, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Curt Schilling and two players connected to steroids by the Mitchell Report, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

“I would hope some of them know me as a person as well,” Palmeiro says about the voters. “I would hope that they would look at on-the-field, see if that’s enough. I’ve accepted it this far. I would love to be in the Hall of Fame. I’m sure some people wouldn’t be happy, even those in the Hall of Fame.”

Palmeiro’s infamously pointed his finger as he denied using steroids during a Congressional Committee on Government Reform hearing on March 17, 2005.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Palmeiro hasn’t changed his story. He denies the claim by Jose Canseco in a 2005 book that Canseco introduced Palmeiro to steroids when they were Rangers teammates in 1992–93. “I have no idea where he got that from,” Palmeiro says. “I’ve seen him since, and he’s been friendly. The positive test has nothing to do with him.”

Palmeiro tested positive in 2005 for stanozolol, an old-school, anabolic steroid banned by the International Olympic Committee in 1974 and the source of the failed test by sprinter Ben Johnson in ’88. He says he doesn’t know how the steroid entered his body, but his best guess is that it came from a tainted vial of B-12 given to him by Miguel Tejada, his Baltimore teammate at the time.

“I hadn’t taken anything else,” he says. “It was the B-12. I can’t prove it. It’s the only thing I can think of.”

Palmeiro’s story is that Canseco was lying and that the only time he took a B-12 shot not administered by a team doctor, it was unknowingly laced with a hard-core steroid—even though another B-12 vial in Tejada’s possession tested clean, even though another teammate who received B-12 from Tejada tested clean and even though the World Anti-Doping Agency and United States Anti-Doping Agency told Congress they had never heard of a case or a claim of a B-12 shot being spiked with a steroid.

“I understand people might not believe it,” he says. “The only thing I can say is logically, why would I do that? Right after Congress? At the end of my career? My body didn’t change. Did I hit 500 home runs? It would probably have been my last year. I would have never done that intentionally. Why would I take that amount of risk?”

The urine sample that led to his failed test was taken May 4. At the time Palmeiro was hitting .226 with one home run and four extra-base hits in 26 games. He needed 59 hits for 3,000.

I point out to him that Robinson Canó tested positive for stanozolol at age 38 with Hall of Fame numbers and three years left on a $240 million contract.

“My results came from hard work,” he says. “I started working in construction with my dad’s company when I was 12 years old. I worked hard. I went after it hard. I did it the clean way. I didn’t have to take anything.”

I tell him to believe his story is to believe he was incredibly unlucky: The one time he used B-12 on his own, he tested positive.

“That was the only time,” he says. “I won the lottery in reverse. I was the older one. I should have known better. I was like, ‘What the heck happened here?’ I don’t know if [Tejada] got it from the Dominican [Republic], Miami, a personal doctor. … Those are things I should have asked. I never should have taken it.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it through the years. I don’t know how it ended up in my vial.”

I tell him the failed test could make it harder for Contemporary Baseball Committee members to consider his candidacy among the seven others.

“I don’t think it’s unfair,” he says. “They didn’t test positive. It’s all warranted. Whatever you throw at me I deserve it. I’m not saying it’s unfair. I deserve everything I’ve got, which is nothing.”

I remind him his teammate and friend, Iván Rodríguez, was voted into the Hall by the writers despite Canseco’s allegation that Rodríguez also used steroids on that Texas team.

“Pudge deserves to be in the Hall of Fame,” Palmeiro says. “If there is a cloud over his head, he’s in the Hall of Fame. I have a cloud over my head and a storm and a downpour. I’m not looking for forgiveness. Maybe just look at my career.”

Canseco alleged in his 2005 book that he introduced Palmeiro to steroids when they were teammates with the Rangers. Palmeiro says Canseco’s claim is false.

John Iacono/Sports Illustrated

All these years later, he admits to one massive regret: taking that B-12 shot.

“I took something I shouldn’t have taken,” he says. “I’m talking about the decision to take that shot I gave myself. That’s on me. Nobody did it to me.”

He says he started taking the B-12 shots in Texas because “I felt like it gave me a little energy boost” through the grind of the season. The Rangers’ team physician would administer the injections to players and their wives, [but] “the team doctors in Baltimore didn’t do it. They wouldn’t do it. That’s why some of the players did it.”

In 2009, Tejada pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his knowledge regarding steroids in baseball. He also said he purchased human growth hormone but threw it in the trash without using it.

“He and I were pretty tight,” Palmeiro says. “We were like brothers, even when he was with Oakland. We were represented by the same agency.

“When we played together, he was a great guy. Pretty upbeat. A very funny guy. Great team player. We got real close. I don’t blame him for anything. It’s my fault.”

Palmeiro’s inclusion on a committee ballot is groundbreaking. It is the beginning of judgment of The Steroid Era officially stretching beyond the writers and to Hall of Famers themselves. Who will they allow to join their club? Palmeiro is the first player suspended for failing a steroid test to appear on a committee ballot.

Mark McGwire did appear on a 2016 committee ballot, but he retired before drug testing with penalties began in ‘04. (He admitted in ‘10 to using steroids.) The Hall reported he received “fewer than five votes” on the Today’s Game ballot. He has not appeared on a second ballot.

Unlike the writers’ ballot, the committee ballot does not include parameters for remaining on the ballot. Candidates are chosen by a screening committee.

Belle, Mattingly and Murphy are getting their third chances at the Hall through a special committee. Mattingly and Murphy were on the 2017 and ‘19 Modern Baseball ballot. The Hall reported only that they received “less than seven votes” in ‘17 and “three or fewer votes” in ‘19. (Full vote tallies are not announced.) Belle was on the ‘16 and ‘18 Today’s Game ballot. Each time the Hall reported he received “fewer than five votes.”

The next Today’s Game ballot would be December 2025 at the earliest. The next two years are reserved for Contemporary Executives, Managers and Umpires in ‘23 and Classic Baseball Era (prior to 1980) in ‘24.

Asked how he is spending time these days, Palmeiro says, “Not a whole lot. I play a little golf. My youngest son is in the minors with the Angels, so I get to watch him and work with him. Not a whole lot of business type deals. I’m not involved in professional baseball. I’d love to get back into the game. Maybe that’s not so easy. I’m 58 years old.”

VERDUCCI: A Timeline of Rafael Palmeiro’s Tumultuous Final Season

When he retired after that 2005 mess of a season, Palmeiro was one of only four players with 500 homers and 3,000 hits. The others were Henry Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray. Since then, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera have joined them. One failed test changed everything. The 20 seasons. The 569 home runs. The 3,020 hits. His presumptive place in the Hall of Fame.

“The first few years after that happened to me it was pretty bad, because I know I brought it onto myself,” he says. “It affected my inner circle. I lost a lot of friendships over it. But it’s true what they say: You find out your true friends.

“I’ve paid a price. It’s been hard. It’s still hard to hear. I watch the shows. Every year when the Hall of Fame [voting] comes around I hear my name with the steroid stuff. ‘He’s a user. He’s a cheater.’ It hurts. That’s not who I am. That’s not what happened.

“But I have to live with it. It hasn’t been easy. Now I get my hopes up again.”