Rafael Palmeiro’s numbers still scream Hall of Fame. His reputation does not.
That split has followed him for years, and it is a big reason he remains outside both Cooperstown and the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame. The Rangers have never made room for him, even though he spent half of his 20-year career in Texas and built the kind of statistical case that usually forces a team’s hand.
The problem, of course, is the failed drug test that ended any realistic shot at the actual Hall of Fame. Palmeiro’s career was already tangled up in the steroid era, but his own place in that story became impossible to ignore after he wagged his finger at Congress in 2005 and denied using steroids, then later failed a drug test.
He passionately denied he ever knowingly took steroids. No one believed Raffy then, or now.
The only difference is people have moved on.
He also never looked like the obvious stereotype. There were no cartoonish muscles, no visual giveaway that made him stand out the way Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds did. Palmeiro looked like an in-shape aging ballplayer, which only deepened the unease once the test came back positive.
That failed test wrecked his Cooperstown chances. He came off the ballot in 2014, and any path back now would require a special committee that is not likely to put him in.
The Rangers, though, could still choose to honor him in their own Hall of Fame the way the Cardinals did with McGwire in 2017 or the Giants did with Bonds in 2018, even retiring his jersey. They have not done that, and the source of that hesitation appears to be bigger than the drug test alone.
Palmeiro’s time in Texas came with the kind of production that belongs in a franchise Hall of Fame, but it also came with a personality that rubbed people the wrong way. In T.R.
Sullivan’s new book, “The Texas Rangers and Me,” he writes, “Let’s just say that not everybody viewed Palmeiro as a paragon of virtue who could do no wrong. He wasn’t everybody’s best friend.”
Sullivan, who covered the Rangers and MLB for more than 30 years, knows the organization as well as anyone. His book includes Palmeiro’s story, along with plenty of other Rangers history.
One of the more memorable examples of Sullivan’s encyclopedic memory came during spring training in Port Charlotte, Florida, in 2001, when he and a bartender argued about Carl Yastrzemski’s career numbers. Sullivan said, “Get me a napkin and a pen.”
He then wrote down Yaz’s batting average, home run and RBI totals for every season of his 23-year career, and the bartender checked the work in Baseball Almanac. Every digit was right.
Sullivan’s book also paints a picture of Palmeiro as a player who was brilliant and driven, but not always easy to be around. His envy toward Alex Rodriguez after Rodriguez joined the Rangers in the winter of 2000 was clear. So was his reaction when the Rangers promoted Carlos Pena late in the 2001 season.
Palmeiro wanted to be treated like the face of the franchise. Instead, he was treated like a great player who was not always seen as the team’s best player. That mattered to him.
Sullivan also points to Palmeiro’s 2002 Viagra commercial, which made him the first active athlete to market a drug for impotence. It became a punchline, though not everyone in Texas found it funny.
“Some in Texas, though, weren’t laughing,” Sullivan writes. “They were just knowingly nodding their head at some marketing executive’s remarkable prescience at selecting Palmeiro for that product.
Palmeiro did have a distinctive flair with the opposite sex, and it was not always appreciated by teammates and others.”
Even now, enough people around the Rangers still prefer to keep their distance. Palmeiro was recently around the club for Nolan Ryan’s “bloody jersey” promotional night and spoke with the media about stories involving The Express. He is 61, looks 51-ish, and remains a complicated figure in baseball history.
The résumé is there. The baggage is there too. And for the Rangers, that combination has kept Palmeiro on the outside looking in.
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