Thirty-six years ago on Mothers Day, 1967, my Mom took "her kids" to the Emerson Restaurant in Bergen County, New Jersey. The Emerson was always "our" place and our only place to go out to eat. They had the best slice steak sandwiches and my Mom always made sure she gave me half of hers. Moms do those kinds of things and my Mom wasn't any different. It was an especially tough time since my father had died the previous year. We had to leave our beloved house for a crummy apartment. My mom had to work and was struggling along to make ends meet and we had my poor sister taking care of us two boys.

A source of comfort and survival was baseball. We played it, we watched it, we lived it. As I mentioned earlier, the Yankees were awful by then and between Mel Stottlemyre and a hobbled, broken down Mickey Mantle, there wasn't much else to root for. For many reasons that have already been covered by Billy Crystal, Mantle was every kid's ideal. Of course we all know now that Mantle wasn't perfect but that doesn't matter, he was our hero.

On this Mothers Day in 1967, Mantle was stuck on 499 career homeruns. It looked like it took an act of will for him to even step on the field at that point and so we wondered how long it would take. So we were at the Emerson and I heard someone say that Mantle was going to be up next and I could hear the game on in the bar section of the building. I asked my Mom if I could go and watch him bat. Now she could have been strict and told me to sit down and eat my dinner, but she didn't and told me to come right back after.

So I walked to the bar section and ignored all the cigarette smoke and looked up at the TV to see Mantle walking up to the plate. For some reason, I just knew it was the moment and everyone else in the bar must have too because it was eerily quiet in there. And then he hit it and the bar erupted and people were shaking hands. Some guy grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me in his happiness. I just stood there and smiled from ear to ear as Mickey ran around the bases with that charming limping gait. My hero had finished his quest.

I don't remember anything much else about that dinner but I'll always remember watching that homerun and I feel so fortunate to have done so since there wasn't any such thing as Baseball Tonight back then.

The point of this whole discussion is that here we are in the year 2003 and on another Mothers Day, Rafael Palmeiro hit his 500th homerun and I saw his mother watching and I felt good. But I was also taken back to that other Mothers Day so many years ago. The homer was typical of his career. It wasn't a perfect pitch to hit as it was inside and a little bit up. But he's been so steady the last ten years and he's just plain learned what to do with those kinds of pitches and he got just enough of it to put the ball in about the tenth row of the right field bleachers.

I am in a constant state of disbelief at those who have been writing or spewing on TV that Palmeiro doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame. What are they crazy? The man has hit 38 or more homers for eight straight years. Nobody has ever done that before. Don't give me that crap about his playing in the age that we live in. Is Rafael Furcal going to hit 500 homeruns? I hardly think so. Players of Palmeiro's ability and steadiness don't come around very often.

The argument is that he wasn't the best player of his generation. Was Billy Williams? Was Willie McCovey? Was Yogi Berra? Was Harmon Killebrew? Was Eddie Matthews? No. No. No. No. And no. That is a stupid argument. Let me use the following analogy:

As a young adult, I worked in a tannery, which is where they get raw hides and turn them into leather for shoes and handbags. The job I worked was piecework and I always made the most money in the factory. Nobody could figure it out because it never looked like I was working hard. There were others doing my job who were flashier and faster...for a while. But my secret was in my steadiness. I never stopped. I never quit. I never took breaks. I just worked at a steady pace for a long period of time. And because of that, I came out on top even though nobody would have ever voted me as the hardest worker in the place.

In just the same way, Palmeiro is a Hall of Famer. He has been steady and sure for a long time and that is what it takes to get the job done. He got the job done and deserves the honor. Well done Rafael Palmeiro and congratulations.