how people can't help but dig bigger graves

i'm rafael palmeiro.

i went in front of a steriod fact finding panel in front of congress, pointed both my finger and mustache at them and the camera, and said, "i have never, ever, taken performance enhancing drugs", even though i was implicated in a book by jose canseco, magically transformed myself from a singles hitter into a home-run hitter the day i met him and have had rumors about my steroid use swirling around me for years.

still, i am convincing.

then, months later, i am found to be guilty of the thing i swore that i never did. and, not only that, it's for stanozolol, which is so potent a steroid that it would be impossible for me to accidentally take it.

i am a scourge. my legacy has been tarnished. i am a national joke. everything i worked for has been shat on. all those rumors about me have been confirmed. and now congress is after me for perjury.

i need to make a statement. i promised to clean the air. it's been 57 days.

i could bite the bullet and say that i made a terrible mistake, and that i could only wish that the youth of today can see what i'm going through and learn from that. i could become an ambassador of being clean by using myself as an example of what went wrong. i wouldn't save my legacy; i would be starting a new one.

or i could try to weasel out of it some more and bring everyone else down with me, like my teammate miguel tejada, by claiming that he supplied me with a "dietary supplement" that may have "triggered the steroid", even though i damn well know that he's innocent and that i injected myself.

yeah. that'll work. it's not my fault, you see. he gave it to me. point your finger at him. i'm not the only guilty one. i hope they'll buy my story.

but now it's coming out that tejada's dietary supplement, B-12, is a legal supplement and in no way can trigger stanozolol, which again, is an extremely potent steroid that cannot be accidentally injected into my system. also, that tejada has been tested three times cleanly and that even B-12 has been tested and cleared.

crap.

so not only am i a cheat and a liar, but i'm also a rat as well, and completely unwelcomed into any baseball clubhouse or hall of fame for the rest of my life.

am i a very stupid man?

no. nobody calls me stupid.