Palmeiro Says Fans Knew About Steroids
BALTIMORE (CBS4) - Disgraced former Major League Baseball player Rafael Palmeiro told the Norris & Avis Show in Baltimore that steroids and other drugs were prevalent in Major League Baseball clubhouses through his career.
"I know that a lot of stuff was going on in clubhouses, not just in Baltimore, but in Texas and other clubhouses around the league," Rafael Palmeiro said. "Guys were carrying drinks or creams or whatever you call it; it was very liberal in clubhouses."
Palmeiro was one of the players who appeared in front of Congress and declared they had never taken performance-enhancing drugs, or PED's.
He was later found to have taken PED's and was summarily suspended near the end of his career. Palmeiro implicated former teammate, shortstop Miguel Tejada, for getting him in trouble when he was caught taking PED's.
But, in the same interview, Palmeiro also said fans were just as culpable because they knew what was actually happening to increase the hitting numbers after the strike ruined the 1994 baseball season.
"I'm not going to sit here and put down the fans," Palmeiro said about the fans. "I think the fans are very knowledgeable about the game and what was going on. I'm sure there are some fans who are hypocritical about it; I think for the most part fans knew what was going on and they just accepted it."
Palmeiro did offer a slight mea culpa to Norris & Avis by saying that he takes full responsibility for his actions and that it "likely cost him the Hall of Fame."
"For anybody to think that I did that intentionally," Palmeiro told the hosts, "and destroy what I had been working on all my life for, just doesn't know me very well."
