How can we believe the man that Harry Caray used to call Rayfell Palermo? Raffy has gone on record as saying he has never, ever intentionally used any performance enhancing drug. What in the heck do you call Viagra? By all accounts it certainly enhances your performance!
But seriously, why should we believe him? I’ve heard all of the arguments – he’s not a muscle bound freak, he doesn’t have acne, his head hasn’t grown to gargantuan proportions, etc… And I know it doesn’t make sense for him to be doing anything now after his big stand in front of congress and his threats of litigation against Jose Canseco and the love fest that led up to his 3,000th hit. (Has he actually filed that defamation of character suit against Jose?) But, unless you believe Jose’s latest theory that MLB dirtied Raffy’s urine to make an example out of him, some banned substance showed up in Palmeiro’s sample.
Canseco claims that he injected Palmeiro with steroids when they were teammates in Texas. Take a look at Raffy’s numbers. Canseco arrived in Texas at the end of the 1992 season. Through that year, his first 7 seasons, Palmeiro’s career high in homers was 26. Starting in 1993 and continuing for the next 11 seasons (with the exception of an injury shortened 1994)Palmeiro never hit less than 37 homers in a season. Some people may say that the sudden power surge can be traced to the new park in Arlington. Perhaps, but the first year of the spike was 1993. That season was played at the old park. The Ballpark at Arlington (now called Ameriquest Field) opened in 1994. I know this all sounds like an Oliver Stone movie but it’s a little more than a coincidence to me.
You can check out Palmeiro’s stats using this link http://baseballreference.com/p/palmera01.shtml.