Say it ain't so.

Say it ain't, Raffy.

Please.

That's all the little kid in me has managed to say over the last few weeks since the curtain was ripped aside and there Raffy sat, weak, evasive, and relying on the paper-thin kind of semantic argument we haven't heard in these parts since we started actually considering what the definition of is is. Or was.

Rafael Corrales Palmeiro's now infamous finger waggle targeted squarely at the House Government Reform Committee is laid bare, at best as an overly zealous, don't-you-tell-me-my-business-type of waggle, and at worst as a grossly transparent, manipulative, over-acted bit of smoke and mirrors waggle designed simply to elevate himself above the mush-mouthed mumblings of Sammy Sosa and weepy-eyed, let's-just-look-to-the-future claptrap emanating from Mark McGwire. A clever bit of guile designed, ingeniously, to make Palmeiro the straight-shooter of the bunch, the only one wearing a white hat.

Say it ain't so.

Say it ain't, Raffy.

The little kid in me wants to believe that someone slipped Raffy a roofy.

Because that's essentially what Rafael Palmeiro is claiming; he failed Major League Baseball's newly mandated drug test because someone, or something, managed to get the drugs into him without him knowing. Gasp! I can see it now... A dark, smoke filled bar, neon lights buzzing, overhead fluorescents flickering, Palmeiro sitting there, back to the room, nursing a tepid High Life, when a passerby "accidentally" stumbles into him. Instinctively, Palmeiro turns and, in so doing, misses the sinister gloved hand that snakes up from under the table and sprinkles the finely ground, stanozolol dust into his beer.

Or maybe, and this is just as likely, Palmeiro was simply walking through the locker room one day before a game, minding his own business, maybe offering an encouraging word to one of the young guys in the clubhouse who look up to him like some sort of baseball immortal (you think the young guys DON'T?) when, just like Indiana Jones, Palmeiro stepped on a secret tile and the air was suddenly abuzz with hundreds of stanozolol tipped darts, pricking, piercing, and puncturing Palmeiro's innocent skin.

Yup, I can see it now. Hell, I can hear it now.

Stanozolol, for those of you keeping score, is the man-made steroid that Palmeiro, according to published reports, got busted for using. If it sounds familiar, it's because it was once made famous by Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson. Johnson was ever so briefly the world record holder in the 100 meters, before getting busted for, you got it, stanozolol. Ben Johnson, however, didn't play for Major League Baseball; he played for the International Olympic Committee. Whereas Palmeiro only got a 10 game vacation from MLB for his crime, Johnson got a lifetime vacation from the IOC. Whereas Palmeiro has to keep all those silly records he set while being a doper, Johnson got to get rid of all his burdensome records. Whereas Palmeiro actually has to go back to work for MLB (can you IMAGINE?!), Johnson got to spend his "early-retirement" years doing such noble things as racing, I could not make this up, horses and stock cars.

The really sad thing about all of this is how complicit Major League Baseball has been in the whole thing. Depending on your definition of time, or dates, Palmeiro and MLB have known about this failed test for months. Remember all the build-up leading to, and the subsequent hoopla surrounding, Palmeiro's joining Willy Mays, Hank Aaron, and Eddie Murray as the only men in the history of baseball to collect 3,000 hits and 500 home runs? Remember the full-page ads MLB took out in Baltimore area papers to congratulate Palmeiro and his heroic achievement?

All of it was done with the knowledge that the man, the myth, the legend they were trumpeting was a proven drug-user.

They were celebrating the Wizard, not of Oz, but of O's, and when the curtain was torn away we all saw what the Wizard really was: a sad, sorry, little boy in a man's body who'd gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Say it ain't so.

You may always reach Alex Cudaback at cuda2@yahoo.com