Palmer, 44, Still Thinks About Comeback

He is 44 years old. He has a daughter who is one year older than Baltimore Orioles pitcher Ben McDonald. He has not worn a major-league uniform since 1984, and it has been another two years since his last season worth talking about.

Yet Jim Palmer, kooky as it may sound, continues to talk about becoming a big-league player again.

“I don’t see any reason why I couldn’t consider pitching again,” he said last month.

He says he’s “a partial realist” who understands that the odds are stacked against a middle-aged man stepping back into a pitching rotation after a five-year layoff. But in the next sentence he is saying that he is throwing a baseball again, that he started doing his shoulder exercises a few weeks back and that, really, he has not been in this kind of shape for years.

“I don’t see my reflexes as being that much slower,” he said.

Last week, Palmer passed on his comeback for another year when he announced that he will work as a broadcaster next season for WMAR-TV in Baltimore and ESPN. Even if it means pitching for the Orioles, he is not interested in holding down three jobs. “I don’t think I am going to have time (for baseball),” he said.

But there always is next year and the next. Palmer said if he still is bitten with the comeback bug next fall, he might consider playing in the Senior Professional Baseball Assn. “to find out how my arm feels.”

But he wasn’t sure about that either, saying, “I don’t even know if the senior league is going to be in existence next year.”

Palmer’s comeback threats are not new. He has been making them since May 17, 1984, the day the Orioles released him. At a news conference at Memorial Stadium, he stood at a lectern and was preparing to give a farewell speech when the tears welled up and he left the room abruptly having said nothing, and everything.

He was and appears to remain convinced that the decision to let him go was premature, and that, given a chance, he could have pitched effectively for more seasons. Some former Orioles seem to agree.

Elrod Hendricks, one of his former catchers, said: “He possibly could have given us another year. But, whatever, I didn’t like the ending. Jim deserved a better ending, as opposed to the way he bowed out.”

Mike Flanagan, a former teammate and fellow pitcher, said: “I thought he was throwing the same. I thought he could still pitch. I think it really bothered him to see (Tom) Seaver pitch for a few more years, and some other guys, too, when in his mind he felt he was in as great a physical condition as anyone in the league.”

Former Manager Earl Weaver said: “Jim Palmer should be pitching in the big leagues today. He should have 320 wins. I wasn’t there in 1984, and I’m not going to criticize the people who were. But if I had managed the Orioles from 1982 to 1990, he’d have been one of my starting pitchers; I’m sure of it.”

In the years since the Orioles and Palmer parted company, his fastball hasn’t gotten faster and he hasn’t won a Cy Young Award. But he has been tossing baseballs on an irregular basis, for reasons his friends cannot fathom.

“He always says he has been throwing,” Flanagan said. “Where? Oh, on the beach at Waikiki, or to some waiter somewhere. It’s incredible some of the people he has thrown to. And it’s strange. He’s throwing just in case he comes back, I guess. When I retire, I am never going to touch a ball again.”

Even at this late date, Palmer’s fiancee, Joni Pearlstone, and several of his friends say he would have a fair shot at making a successful comeback.

“It’s not like he sits around, feet up in the air, watches football games and throws potato chips in his mouth,” Pearlstone said. “He has a lot of regard for his body. He’s always doing something.”

Flanagan said he would recommend that his team, the Toronto Blue Jays, invite Palmer to spring training, if the Hall of Famer were interested and available.

Why?

“Why not?” Flanagan said. “He’d come in being the best pitching coach in the game. He’d have an instant effect on young pitchers. And on our club, he might end up a starting pitcher. They run me out there every four or five days, don’t they?”

Palmer doesn’t need money -- his earnings as a broadcaster-underwear model are nearly what he made as a ballplayer. (Palmer’s top pitching salary, in 1984, was $600,000.) When he was playing for the Orioles, he didn’t particularly enjoy hotel rooms, coffee-shop cuisine or being separated for weeks at a time from his family.

But, in 1990, the yearning has not gone away.

“When he talks about broadcasting, it’s not the same way he talks about baseball,” Flanagan said. “It’s not with the same kind of excitement.”

Palmer said: “I miss being a part of a team. It’s nice to do something collectively. For a lot of years, that’s what the Orioles stood for.”