Not Resting on His Laurels : Palmer, 45, Has Plenty of Support, Few Illusions in His Bid to Become the First Hall of Famer to Return to the Majors

The autograph seekers are well armed. They extend baseballs, bats, photos, scraps of paper and even a box of Wheaties at a perspiring and accommodating Jim Palmer after another workout in his comeback attempt with the Baltimore Orioles.

A gray-haired woman beams and says, “Good luck, Jim, you’ve always been my favorite.”

“Thank you,” replies Palmer, who winks, asks the woman her age and is told 71.

“Oh, my age,” says Palmer, drawing a laugh from the people around him.

He is 45, actually, but on some days in this improbable spring there are parts of his body that might feel 71.

The Orioles ran 34 sprints, from foul line to foul line, the other day, and teammate Mark Williamson said to Palmer: “By trying to run you out of here, they’re going to kill eight to 10 other guys.”

It has been almost seven years since Palmer did anything more strenuous than play tennis.

His 19-year pitching career with the Orioles ended May 23, 1984,

when he was released after refusing to go on the voluntarily retired list. That bit of unfinished business has weighed on Palmer, influencing his decision to try a comeback, although it also is motivated by financial aspects.

If successful, he will become the first Hall of Fame player--he was inducted last summer after appearing on the December ballot for the first time--to have reactivated his career.

The autograph seekers offer support. The mail, piled at his locker, is all positive.

“People root for underdogs and I’m a super underdog,” said Palmer, one of 22 pitchers in the camp of a club that is considered a contender in the American League East. Baltimore will not hand Palmer a berth strictly on the basis of what he once was.

It is believed, in fact, that the Orioles, fearing Palmer would become a distraction, did not want to extend this spring invitation but felt obligated because of his contributions during two decades of Baltimore glory.

Despite his personality clashes with then-Manager Earl Weaver and a succession of often strange and mysterious ailments that seemed to border on hypochondria, Palmer worked almost 4,000 innings, pitched four pennant-clinching victories, won the Cy Young award three times, registered 20 or more victories eight times in posting a 268-152 record, and had an earned-run average of 2.86.

He is an heirloom who is being shown proper respect by the Orioles as they say all the right things, camouflaging, perhaps, their doubts and concerns.

“I don’t see him as a distraction at all,” General Manager Roland Hemond said. “I think of him as an invaluable asset, an inspiration for our younger players.

“He’s an example of how a career should be cherished and nourished. The challenge and competitive void was so great for Jim that he wanted to do it again.”

Said Manager Frank Robinson, a former Baltimore teammate: “If Jim Palmer thinks he can pitch at the major league level again, I can’t imagine him doing it in another uniform. There’s no way we could not give him the opportunity.”

Opportunity, or publicity gambit by Palmer?

“No way,” Palmer said. “I don’t need the publicity, and I’m not having a mid-life crises.

“People even say I’ve always been jealous of Nolan Ryan (who is 15 months younger) and want to prove I can pitch just as well, but that’s ridiculous and unrealistic.

“No one is in Nolan’s class. That’s another gene set. But what I can do is go at it with the same energy, emotion and mental approach.”

Said Gregg Olson, Baltimore’s relief ace: “Anyone who knows Jim Palmer knows this is not a gimmick. He’s already a Hall of Famer. Why would he risk his reputation on a hoax? Why would he risk possible embarrassment on a gimmick?”

Several veteran pitchers are trying to revive or sustain careers this spring, among them Goose Gossage, Steve Howe, Britt Burns, Floyd Bannister and Matt Keough.

Palmer is the most renowned, as evidenced by the “Palmer Watch” that the Sarasota Herald-Tribune is running daily.

He is scheduled to make his exhibition debut March 11, but Robinson said he is looking at Palmer as a starting pitcher and will judge him based on a six-week spring, not one or two performances.

“I’ve told Frank I’ll do anything--start, relieve, whatever,” Palmer said. “I’ll pitch in A, B, C or D games. I think I can be an effective pitcher and positive influence, but I realize I may pitch well and not make the team, and I accept that.

“I can’t afford an injury, or more than one or two bad performances, which wasn’t always true in the past. I’ve had some of my best seasons after some of my worst springs.

“My arm feels healthier than it did in ‘84, and I’ve thrown the ball better every time, but I’m a realist. Can I get the curve over? Can I hold runners on? Can I make the right pitch at the right time?

“I know that I’m already being prejudged on the basis of age, of being too old, and I know that I’ve lost one advantage, the mystique. People used to say I could beat Cleveland simply by throwing my glove out there. Now I’ll need my body and mind along with it. The mystique that worked for Jim Palmer in his prime is gone, which is something Orel Hershiser may have to cope with as well.

“I mean, I’m sincere in this, but I don’t know if the hitters will think I’m sincere once they see my stuff. I met Barry Bonds the other day and he said to me, ‘Why don’t you make your comeback in the National League? My dad told me about you, and I’d like to hit some home runs off you.’ ”

There are players in the Baltimore camp who weren’t born when Palmer went to his first spring training with the Aberdeen Orioles in Thomasville, Ga., in 1964 or pitched in his first World Series two years later, at 19.

On appearance, little has changed. Tanned and handsome, he is only three pounds over his 1984 weight of 198, which is one reason he is still posing for underwear ads 11 years after posing for his first.

“The amazing thing is that not many athletes sustain their physical condition as well as Jim has,” Hemond said. “If you saw him walk on the field and didn’t know who he was, you’d say he was a 30-year-old pitcher in his prime.”

Toying with this comeback idea over the winter, Palmer was examined by an orthopedist and told there was no anatomical reason he couldn’t give it a try.

He began workouts in Miami in mid-December, supervised by Lazaro (Laser) Collazo, an unpaid assistant pitching coach at the University of Miami.

“For a guy going to the Hall of Fame, you have terrible mechanics,” Laser told him during an early workout.

“Laser, I’m already in the Hall of Fame,” replied Palmer, who has since made adjustments and said he couldn’t have expected textbook mechanics after seven years of inactivity.

Several clubs scouted Palmer, but only the Orioles extended an invitation, though their reports are believed to question his velocity.

“I won a lot of games with marginal stuff,” Palmer said. “I won a lot of games throwing 82, 83, 84 m.p.h., and I’m at that level, maybe even above it, now.”

Palmer said his wife of 10 months, Joni, 41, a photographer, is fully behind the comeback, and that on the eve of accepting the invitation, when he began to have second thoughts, he received encouragement from former ABC broadcasting partner Al Michaels and a St. Louis Cardinal minor leaguer named Mike Fiore, to whom he had been pitching batting practice in Miami.

There was also encouragement from former Oriole teammate Brooks Robinson, Palmer said, smiling.

“Brooks is thrilled,” Palmer said. “He’s doing all the speeches and card shows I had been scheduled to do.”

The question remains: Why?

Why, at 45, after seven years, is he running the risk of tarnishing that plaque in Cooperstown?

Though reasonably secure because of endorsements, appearances and his broadcasting responsibilities with Oriole affiliate WMAR, which is holding his job through the spring, Palmer said part of it is financial.

Whereas baseball salaries have escalated to a point where there is “no rhyme or reason to them,” he said, broadcasting salaries seem to be going the other way.

ABC no longer does baseball and no longer employs Palmer. ESPN, which employed him last year, asked him to sign a three-year contract for less money, and he refused.

“If I was still with ESPN, I wouldn’t be doing this,” Palmer said.

It is not known what he will be paid if he makes the team, but the already agreed-to salary is believed to be more than the $600,000 he said he was paid by the Orioles in 1984--$600,000 being less than the average major league salary in 1991.

Palmer said, though, that there was a larger reason for this comeback: the unfinished aspect of his departure from the Orioles and the possibility again of getting up in the morning with the day’s agenda clearly defined.

Longtime Baltimore coach Elrod Hendricks said this was not something that came up overnight, that Palmer has been obsessed with the thought that he might have left too soon, that he could be the first Hall of Famer to return.

Robinson, also a Hall of Famer, said he could relate to those feelings.

“One of the hardest things for an athlete to do is leave feeling he was forced to leave with something left,” the manager said.

“For a lot of years, I felt I could still play and thought about coming back. It wasn’t a burning thing, but it takes awhile for the competitive fires to go out. I don’t think you can be successful without them, but the more successful you are, the longer it takes for the flame to die.”

Palmer left in ’84 because of torn cartilage in his knees, bursitis in his elbow and problems with the major stabilizing muscle in his back. He was released after three starts and two relief appearances for a team that lost 13 of its first 17 games.

“If the end had been more definitive I probably wouldn’t be doing this, but I’ve always wondered if my career was really over,” he said. “I might have tried to come back in ‘85, but my kids (two daughters from a previous marriage) were a priority then and ABC offered a four-year contract. I wasn’t sure if I could still pitch, so I took the sure thing.”

Now, wearing the No. 22 that the Orioles had retired, Palmer said he doesn’t feel he is jeopardizing his reputation or accomplishments, since they are already in the book, and there is little chance the Orioles--or his own pride--will allow him to be embarrassed.

He also said he will be prepared to return to the WMAR booth, wiser and more familiar with the players he has been close to this spring, if he doesn’t make it, but he seems to hunger for the camaraderie of the dugout and clubhouse.

“I know I’m not the future of the Orioles, but I think I can be part of the present,” Palmer said. “I’m not looking to take (pitching coach) Al Jackson’s job, but I also think I can help with some of the younger guys.

“It’s a crapshoot, but I’ll never know if I don’t take the risk.”