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........................................| 159 The full-page ad on the back of the sports section of USA Today on Monday, July 18, 2005, looks slick. The ad consists of three images. On top is a picture of a handsome man with a dark mustache, designer sunglasses atop the brim of his Baltimore Orioles cap, his expression calm and focused. On the bottom, the same man is captured completing his graceful swing, the top hand coming off the bat, the ball heading deep in a hurry. The photographs are separated by the middle image, two seams of a baseball. On the pristine white surface are printed these words: “Only 4 men in the history of Major League Baseball have recorded 3,000 hits and 500 home runs. Congratulations, Raffy, you never cease to amaze us.” The note is signed by Allan H. “Bud” Selig. Indeed, Rafael Palmeiro joined some elite company when he recorded his three thousandth hit the previous Friday night, a double down the left field line in Seattle. Only Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Eddie Murray had managed the dual 3,000–500 milestone. Palmeiro had fashioned a great success story. He had fled Cuba with his parents at age six, leaving behind an older brother, someone he would not see again for twenty-one years. Learning the game from his father, a construction worker, Palmeiro went on to become a three-time All-American at Mississippi State, where the baseball training complex now bears his name. Over a twenty-year career in the big leagues, he had been one of the game’s purest hitters. His latecareer success was particularly impressive. No player in baseball history could match his string of nine straight seasons of thirty-eight or more home runs, which he accomplished from 1995 to 2003, seasons in which he turned thirty-one to thirty-nine years old. Other than his surprising stint as a pitchman for Viagra in 2002–3 (becoming the first prominent athlete to tout a treatment for erectile dysfunction ), Palmeiro mostly eluded the glare of the bright lights throughout his first nineteen seasons. He played almost all his career with low-profile teams in Texas and Baltimore. He never won a home run title, never finished in the top four in the MVP voting, and never set foot on the grand stage of the World Series. Though his hard work was unquestioned and his 11 Suspended Disbelief Reading, Pennsylvania 160 | chapter 11 numbers had carved a near-certain path to Cooperstown, he remained the game’s most quiet superstar. All of that changed in 2005 when Rafael Palmeiro became a shining knight–like symbol for baseball’s integrity. He railed about the accusations of steroid use leveled against him in Jose Canseco’s book Juiced, which had been released on Valentine’s Day. In the congressional hearings the next month, Palmeiro’s defiant statement of innocence stood in sharp contrast to the tortured “I’m not here to talk about the past” testimony of Mark McGwire .1 Resplendent in a blue pinstriped suit, his dark hair flecked with just a hint of gray, Palmeiro said: “Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Rafael Palmeiro and I am a professional baseball player. I’ll be brief in my remarks today. 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.” His words were delivered with a stony glare and a memorable wagging of his index finger at the camera. For Major League Baseball, Palmeiro’s three thousandth hit on July 15 seemed like healing waters. One could well understand Commissioner Selig’s desire to bask in the moment. He had felt ambushed by the congressional hearings and the raft of negative publicity that followed. Within his office, many felt that baseball was being unduly targeted in an American society that had become enraptured with pharmaceutical enhancement , from Rogaine to Ritalin, from Botox to Viagra. Other sports seemed to be getting close to a free pass. How was it that football, for instance, was suddenly producing all of these three hundred–plus-pound linemen who could run the forty-yard dash in 4.7? But baseball, still identified by many with that charmingly archaic phrase—the national pastime—had become the focal point, perhaps the whipping boy, of the American discussion on performance-enhancing drugs. In a year in which...

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