Many people — media commentators, fans, baseball executives — have been all over Rafael Palmeiro, a fine player for many years dating back to the 1980’s. Palmeiro is a Hall-of-Famer, or at least was, until his suspension for apparent steroid use.
The outrage seems to stem from the fact that he was ‘caught’ for using steroids and had said he didn’t take steroids, including during a rather earnest appearance before Congress.
Every athlete — in every sport— who has ever been ‘caught’ denies using steroids. It’s what they do. From weightlifters to cyclists to football players, they deny.
One might say, “Nobody likes a cheater”. Well, we actually seem to LOVE cheaters. How many guys on the line with Ben Johnson at the 1988 Olympics were really ‘clean’?
Yet they all got lots of attention, fame and money— at least the medal “winners”. We preferred to pretend they were all clean, and only Johnson was guilty— because he was indeed ‘caught’.
Do any of us now believe that all those runners were clean? How many of them were later in their careers “caught”, but with little fanfare? If media reports over the years are accurate, everyone from that ’88 race has since been connected in some way with performance-enhancing drug usage.
Does anyone believe those baseball players who hit mammoth home runs throughout the last 10 or more years were just eating their Wheaties?
The more pertinent question may be why no one cared then, even though everyone knew something was up?
Nobody wanted to acknowledge the truth, despite very public admissions of steroid use from former stars like Ken Caminiti and before him football great Lyle Alzado.
Sports administrators, the media, fans, all knew there was a serious issue.
We chose to want to believe that all was fine.
Or was it simply “OK” because baseball, in its infinite wisdom, chose to make steroid usage “illegal” only recently, though virtually all other sports and amateur/Olympic athletes were at least theoretically at risk of punishment if they got caught?
We now choose to berate Palmeiro, when there are likely dozens and dozens of athletes in all the major sports who have simply not been “caught”.
Baseball czar Bud Selig now triumphantly talks of dealing with this issue, when he was part of a clique that ignored the issue for years— when it served the purposes of promoting baseball after the devastating strike of 1994.
There are no football players on steroids in the NFL? In the NCAA?
C’mon.
The Palmeiro situation again gives us an excuse to dance around the real issues, and focus almost exclusively on him. Like Ben Johnson before him, the only difference between Palmeiro and the countless other athletes — professional and “amateur” — who used or still use performance-enhancing drugs is that they got caught. The real hypocrisy rests perhaps not with Rafael Palmeiro, but with the rest of us.
