Former Texas Rangers slugger Rafael Palmeiro did not receive enough votes to earn election to the Baseball Hall of Fame via the contemporary players committee, which voted Sunday at the Winter Meetings in San Diego.
The only player that received the necessary 12 votes was first baseman Fred McGriff, whose career is most associated with the Atlanta Braves.
The ballot featured players who are not in the Hall of Fame and played the bulk of their careers after 1980. Their initial Hall of Fame eligibility has been exhausted.
Palmeiro is one of just seven players to have at least 3,000 hits and at least 500 home runs for his career, as he finished with 3,020 hits, 569 home runs and 1,835 RBI. He played two different five-year stints with the Rangers and hit his 500th home run with the club. He played 20 years.
Those numbers, normally, would have earned Palmeiro induction on the first ballot. But Palmeiro found himself tangled in the web of baseball’s performance-enhancing drugs scandal late in his career. In the summer of 2005 he tested positive for steroids and was suspended for 10 games. He also blamed the positive test on a B-12 shot he told reporters he received from teammate Miguel Tejada.
The positive test came six weeks after he participated in a Senate committee hearing and waved his finger at the committee’s members declaring that he had never used performance-enhancing drugs.
“I have never used steroids — period,” he told the committee.
The ballot also featured outfielder Barry Bonds, pitcher Roger Clemens, pitcher Curt Schilling, outfielder Albert Belle, outfielder Dale Murphy and first baseman Don Mattingly. None of them earned enough votes for induction.
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