Commentary:
By Tony Castro

If Rafael Palmeiro in his childhood in Cuba ever imagined he would one day play major league baseball and accomplish the rare feat of 500 home runs and 3,000 hits, it might have seemed nothing more than a far-fetched American Dream.
But today at the age of 49, Palmeiro is known in his native homeland as the greatest Cuban slugger in history – “the best there ever was” like the line in Bernard Malamud’s 1952 novel “The Natural,” the tragic story of the mythical baseball hero Roy Hobbs that was changed into a happy-ending film in the 1984 Robert Redford film.

And perhaps Rafael Palmeiro’s own story is just that – a tragedy of someone who was President George W. Bush’s favorite ballplayer when he played for the Texas Rangers and seemed destined to go down as one of the game’s immortals enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

But on Wednesday, at home in Colley-ville, Texas, Rafael Palmeiro got the bad news that despite being only the fourth player in history to be a member of the 500 home run and the 3,000 hit clubs, he remains not an immortal of the game but a pariah.

Rafael Palmeiro tainted by steroid use

Palmeiro not only was once again passed over by voters for induction in the Hall of Fame but he also appears to have been on the ballot for the last time, his splendid career seemingly forever tainted by a failed performance enhancing drug test in 2005.

The four-time all-star first baseman will be removed from future ballots after falling below the five percent threshold necessary to remain eligible for next year’s vote.

To stay on the ballot for up to 15 years, a retired player must receive at least five percent each year. In this year’s balloting, Palmeiro slipped to 25 votes and 4.4 percent of the 571 ballots submitted, down from 8.8 percent of the ballots submitted a year ago.

He received 64 votes in his first year of eligibility in 2011 and 72 in 2012.

Palmeiro falls off the ballot at an inopportune time when Hall of Fame voters have a crowded ballot of players, as there is a backlog of qualified candidates – all because of the question of performance enhancing drug use — and having a limit of only 10 votes per ballot.

Last year Rafael Palmeiro seemed to have sadly come to an acceptance of his fate.

“I am concerned that now… with the guys coming up, some of my votes will be taken off and given to other guys,” he said at that time. “I don’t think there is anything I can do.”

There is also considerable disagreement among voters about whether performance enhancing drug use should disqualify someone like Rafael Palmeiro

ESPN’s Buster Olney, one of the most knowledgeable and respected members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America who decide on Hall of Fame membership, voted for Palmeiro.

Hall of Fame voting protests

Ken Gurnick, who writes for MLB.com, went so far as to protest by submitting a “blank” ballot, feeling that all of the so-called Steroids Era was tainted and saying he can’t discriminate from one suspect and the innocent, so it was better not to vote at all.

Another voter, longtime Miami Herald columnist and ESPNer Dan Le Batard, went even further.

In the strongest protest yet, he gave his vote to Deadspin.com and joined the popular Internet site for the purpose, its editors said, of “making a farce and mockery of the increasingly solemn election process by turning his vote over to you, the readers.”

“I hate all the moralizing we do in sports in general,” Le Batard said, “but I especially hate the hypocrisy in this:
“Many of the gatekeeper voters denying Barry Bonds Hall Of Fame entry would have they themselves taken a magical, healing, not-tested-for-in-their-workplace elixir if it made them better at their jobs, especially if lesser talents were getting the glory and money.

“Lord knows I’d take the elixir for our ESPN2 TV show if I could.”

And so Palmeiro’s chances – and that of all the Steroids Era tainted players — of ever getting into the Hall of Fame potentially rests on whether voters like Gurnick or Le Batard can sway the process into an inclusionary change.
More realistically, Palmeiro’s fate is now in the hands of the Hall of Fame’s veterans committee, which ultimately could take a more sympathetic view.

Rafael Palmeiro ended his 19-year career in 2005 with 569 home runs and 3,020 hits.

Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Eddie Murray are the only others players to have collected more than 500 home runs and 3,000 hits. All three are in the Hall of Fame.

As fate would have it, 2005 turned out to be the season that should have been a crowning moment but turned into a nightmare for Palmeiro.

With admitted steroid user Jose Can-seco alleging in his book released that January that he personally injected his former teammate with banned drugs, Rafael Palmeiro went a torrid defense of himself – even testifying in a Congressional hearing that March, with an emphatic finger wag as he admonished lawmakers and a televised audience:

“Let me start by telling you this: I have never used steroids, period. I don’t know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never.”

But on Aug. 1, Palmeiro, by then with the Baltimore Orioles, was suspended by Major League Baseball for testing positive for steroids.

When he returned after a 10-day suspension, he found that even the “Rafael Palmeiro Appreciation Day” at Camden Yards in celebration of his 500-home run, 3,000-hit milestone had been canceled.

Palmeiro continues to maintain that he never took steroids, insisting that he may have unknowingly ingested them through a B12 injection.

“I’d hope voters would look at my body of work over my career and maybe put more emphasis on that,” Rafael Palmeiro said in a 2010 interview.

“That one steroid incident is unfortunately all people remember. They don’t remember the other 19 years that I played the game the right way.”

Tony Castro is the author of the newly-released “The Prince of South Waco: American Dreams and Great Expectations,” as well as of the critically-acclaimed “Chicano Power: The Emergence of Mexican America” and the best-selling “Mickey Mantle: America’s Prodigal Son.” Reprinted from Voxxi