Rafael Palmeiro to the Hall of Fame: Let voters handle steroid issue

Rafael House: The first shelter for the HOF-less.

The 2013 ballot is expected to be a more accurate barometer of how the Steroid Era will be viewed comparatively to baseball history. Palmeiro acknowledges he’ll be curious, too.

“Next year, I think, will be the telling story about what all this means. It’s going to be interesting,” Palmeiro said. “You have guys that were all-time greats, and so we’ll see how the voters are going to look at all of us. The guys [newly eligible] next year will give us a better indication what the future holds for all of us, I guess.”

...“I am not sure what to make of that. I was surprised about Juan Gonzalez, that he totally dropped off the ballot,” Palmeiro said. “I think what McGwire did for baseball—going for the [season] home run record—I think he was one of the great players of our time. It’s just hard to see something like that happen to him, and for myself, for that matter. We’ll have to see what happens next year, whether I go up or down. I don’t have a clear picture of what the future holds, what it’ll mean for me.”

For his part, Palmeiro said he watched the Hall of Fame telecast Monday but wasn’t expecting a change in fortune from 2011.

“I didn’t really watch it that closely this time around. Obviously, I am disappointed again, but it is what it is. It is tough to think [87 percent] of the writers are not seeing me as a Hall of Famer,” Palmeiro, 47, said. “Maybe they will one day, I don’t know. At the rate that it is going, if it happens at all—and it may not – it looks like it will happen when I am an old man.”