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Teaser of the article, it is quite the sad story.
What do ya'll think? should Rafael be reconciled with baseball? Or should the man die in exile with all the dishonour that comes from the steroid era? If so, why should McGire or Bonds still be welcome in the MLB?
Too be honest I think the damage is already done, in the minds of many he's the Benedict Arnold of modern baseball.
Teaser of the article, it is quite the sad story.
quote:Overall I thought it was a great article, but I don't agree with the conclusion about what vindication would do for him.
At the far end of the Mexican restaurant just off the highway in a Dallas suburb, he slides into a booth.
"I could still do it," Rafael Palmeiro says. "If I had to play a full season, I could probably hit .270, with 25 home runs. It's between the ears, man."
The restaurant is half-full for lunch, and the pop music on the speakers drowns out any noise. A lanky, 30-something waiter comes by every five minutes, pauses and asks if he wants water, or if he's OK. Each time the waiter leaves, he glances back at Palmeiro.
It's awkward, but it's not quite celebrity gawking -- he doesn't want a photo. His curiosity is more academic. He studies him. He knows this man, of course. We all do. He was once a sure-fire baseball Hall of Famer. Now the waiter is attempting to fold together the two defining points in this man's life and make sense of it -- the 500th home run followed by his name stamped onto the wall in what was then called the Ballpark in Arlington a few miles down the road, and the announcement he was a cheater two years later.
Palmeiro smiles politely. For nearly 11 years, besides the occasional phone interview and a documentary produced about his college baseball team, he's disappeared from public life. But now he wants to empty his soul. When the waiter leaves he turns his shoulders to face me.
"This isn't how I envisioned my life to be."
quote:It's like saying you shouldn't bother freeing an innocent prisoner because he already spent a decade in prison. Vindication would remove the pariah status that he and his family have lived under for the last decade.
If he injected steroids every day or not at all, the last decade of his life happened, and the torment of knowing it can never be reversed is excruciating.
What do ya'll think? should Rafael be reconciled with baseball? Or should the man die in exile with all the dishonour that comes from the steroid era? If so, why should McGire or Bonds still be welcome in the MLB?
Too be honest I think the damage is already done, in the minds of many he's the Benedict Arnold of modern baseball.