FanHouse Rafael Palmeiro

Reggie Jackson is right. So is Jim Rice, along with Rick Telander, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, who joins me as a baseball Hall of Fame voter and as a hardliner who agrees with Jackson and Rice:

No steroids guys in Cooperstown.

No Roger Clemens. No Barry Bonds. No Mark McGwire. No Sammy Sosa. No Rafael Palmeiro. No Alex Rodriguez. Nobody within a syringe of evidence showing they were artificially enhanced during any portion of their playing career.

I don't care that Ty Cobb was a racist (and possibly worse), that Mickey Mantle joined others as prolific drunks, and that Gaylord Perry spit his way into Cooperstown. They're already in the Hall of Fame. I can't do anything about their entries, but I can do something about Clemens, Bonds and the rest.

There have been plenty of moments in baseball involving steroids that stand out in our memories, but one that's always stuck in the back of my mind was Rafael Palmeiro sitting in front of Congress back in March 2005. There he was wagging his finger at Congress and saying "I have never used steroids. Period. I don't know how to say it any more clearly than that."

Then five months later Palmeiro was being suspended 10 games by Major League Baseball for failing a steroid test. Of course Palmeiro then began backtracking and saying that he'd never "knowingly" taken any steroids in his life, and he wasn't changing his story on Friday as he was inducted into the College Baseball Hall of Fame.

So it turns out Sammy Sosa was a steroid freak.

Who'da thunk it?

When it comes to surprises, last week's revelation was like finding out Iran's elections were juiced for the incumbent. If you want shocking news, however, you've come to the right place.

We are ready to reveal all the players who failed baseball's 2003 drug test. The results were supposed to be kept confidential, but Alex Rodriguez's name was leaked to Sports Illustrated and Sosa was outed last week in the New York Times.

There are 102 names to go. This drip-drip-drip could go on for years, but we're not going to let it.

Let's just get this out of the way right now. I don't like Jose Canseco. I don't respect how he went about trying to bring down baseball in some sort of personal vendetta/money-making scheme. He might try to sell us on the fact that he just wanted baseball clean, but I don't believe those were his original motives. He needed money and he was angry with baseball for allegedly black-balling him.

We can call Canseco any number of names -- rat, snitch, crybaby, cheater -- but one thing he's not is a liar. With the announcement that Manny Ramirez has been suspended 50 games for a drug violation, Canseco has been vindicated for what seems like the hundredth time.

I don't know if you know this or not, but since he's commissioner of Major League Baseball, Bud Selig seems to think this gives him special privileges that nobody else in America is entitled to. Why, as commissioner of baseball he's not bound by the ex post facto laws of our society, which means he's allowed to suspend Alex Rodriguez for breaking rules that weren't yet in place.

Hi, everybody! I've been sleeping all day and just woke up moments ago. What's been happening in the world of sports? Heh, did the Orioles bolster their bullpen? Let me jump over and find out what's going o-

Oh. OH.

And here I was prepared to do another strip about the Pirates. Tonight's Dugout is after the jump. Move along, nothing to see here.

Jamie Moyer and Greg Maddux know each other very well. The Cubs drafted them both in 1984, 31st and 135th respectively. They were rookies together, played together in Chicago, and have been pitching with or against or amongst each other, win or lose, for the last 24 years.

Last night, the Phillies beat the Padres 1-0. Maddux and Moyer were as they'd been in their primes again, shutting down batters one after another, with only Pat Burrell's late game homerun to spoil the fun. It was a lot like the movie "Space Cowboys," where you realize that the best cowboys are the oldest and Greg Maddux ends up sitting mournfully on the moon.

We've been doing The Dugout since the early 80s so we know these men. We know what they can accomplish. We know the fire that burned in their hearts then and still flickers aflame today. We even know how they managed to have AOL Instant Messenger™ in 1986.

Today's Dugout, about the prices we pay in our youth for the cost of tomorrow's twilight, is after the jump.

The era of the medication endorsing athlete, while still early, has been pretty good to us. No one will every forget when Rafael Palmeiro came out with the Viagra ads or those fascinating Nolan Ryan Advil collaborations.

Okay, so those are a little clownish (or suspicious in Raffy's case) and certainly, Mike Schmidt's willingness to tackle BPH and the issues that surround an enlarged prostate are much more worthwhile. Granted, the subject is ready available humor for those without any sense of decorum and a heavily juvenilized mind, but there's nothing funny about dudes getting older and having to pee a lot.

"These bathroom breaks got in the way of life's normal moments," explains Schmidt. "When my doctor diagnosed me with BPH, I was relieved to learn that it was a common condition. I was also relieved to know BPH is not cancer. Together, we developed a game plan to manage my symptoms with Uroxatral(R) (alfuzosin HCl 10 mg extended-release tablets)."

Most of the conversation about John Rocker's recent radio interviews have centered on his comments about Bud Selig, and in particular, Rocker's advice that the commish "do the world a favor and kill himself." Rocker doesn't appreciate Selig's attempts to portray himself as being unaware about baseball's steroid problem, claiming Selig was aware Rocker flunked a steroid test and did nothing about it. (Rocker fails to mention how MLB's CBA with the player's association didn't allow Selig to do anything at the time, but whatever ...)

But while the comments above received most of the attention yesterday, I think the bigger bombshell should be the fact that Rocker claims he actually received advice about how to "safely" do steroids at a Rangers' spring training session. From the AP:

Rocker said that doctors from management and the players' association, following a spring training talk with the Texas Rangers about steroids and other topics, pulled himself, A-Rod, Rafael Palmeiro and Ivan Rodriguez aside. Rocker was with the Rangers in 2002.

"Look guys, if you take one kind of steroid, you don't triple stack them and take them 10 months out of the year like Lyle Alzado did," Rocker said the doctors told them. "If you do it responsibly, it's not going to hurt you."

Rocker didn't name the doctors, but it certainly sounds like they were under the employment of either MLB or the player's association, doesn't it? If true, this definitely widens the scope of responsibility for the steroid problem from solely players and rogue trainers to include the actual league itself. If Congress insists on a dog-and-pony show involving Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens, why can't they also force Rocker, A-Rod and Pudge in to testify?

With the Department of Justice officially looking into whether Miguel Tejada lied to federal investigators in 2005, there's a chance the Astros' shortstop could have difficulty gaining entry back into the United States or even face deportation once he's here. And he can blame Rafael Palmeiro for the trouble ...

When Palmeiro tested positive steroids soon after appearing in front of Congress denying that he had ever used PEDs, Palmeiro told federal investigators that he received the injection from Tejada. But Tejada denied the allegation, and for the next two years his problems appeared to be over. When the Mitchell Report implicated Tejada yet again, though, Congress asked the DOJ to investigate whether Tejada lied back in 2005.

If investigators find evidence that he lied -- or even if he comes clean at this point -- there's a chance that he could be deported, said Hosuton-based immigration lawyer Alexandre Afanassiev to the Houston Chronicle:

"If Mr. Tejada admits that he lied ... that might be enough for immigration to initiate deportation proceedings. Because the way immigration law is written, you either need a conviction or an admission you committed a crime."

Tejada has a green card, but it's not immediately known how long he's had it. If he's had it longer than five years, his chances of being deported are greatly reduced, although he could still have trouble returning to the country once charges are officially filed. That doesn't mean that he's not without options, though.