You can argue that you didn’t know the supplement was loaded, or that your personal trainer gave you something and told you it was safe, so you took it. But you can’t argue that you didn’t take anything, not now or ever, and therefore the positive test is inexplicable.

Palmeiro was just another of a large number of players whose power numbers surged in the mid-1990s. He went from a pretty good hitter with occasional power to a very good hitter with major power.

Like everybody else, he said it all came through hard work and clean living. And we might have been able to live with that — baseball, after all, had no prohibition against steroids — had he not swore to tell the truth to Congress and pulled that act with the waving finger and the solemn declaration that he had never used steroids. When he tested positive after that performance, he has some ‘splainin’ to do.

Instead of explaining, he dissembled. He didn’t know how it could have happened. He really was clean. He felt terrible about it. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

That was bad enough. The discovery that he tried to blame Tejada is the last straw.

They say you don’t know a person’s true character until he faces adversity. Well, Palmeiro has faced adversity, and he’s come up lacking in every way possible. Once known as a nice guy, he’s proved to be a rat and a slimeball, a guy who would try to smear an innocent teammate to save his own worthless butt.

Get out of the game now, Raffy, and stay out. And good luck finding something to do with the rest of your life.

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