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What is easy to forget, in the immediate spasm of emotion, is that Mike Piazza didn’t get eliminated from the Hall of Fame yesterday. It can feel that way, of course. In these first few years after baseball’s Steroid Era, everything about the Hall of Fame has become inflamed. Passions run furious.
Anger, too.
So though all signs indicated nobody was going to win the 75 percent of the vote necessary to gain entrance to the Hall — and nobody did, Craig Biggio’s 68.2 percent coming closest — it still was a shock to see Hall president Jeff Idelson open the big manila envelope at 2 o’clock yesterday afternoon and remove a slice of paper without even one name on it.
And there you had it: For the eighth time in history — and just the third time since 1971 — there will not be a Hall of Famer selected by the vote of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Even if we saw it coming, it still is a shot of cold water to the face to see it confirmed. And as a guy who, for the first time in four ballots, actually submitted one with the maximum 10 names, I must admit, I’m a little puzzled that nobody got in.
But that’s the thing about this ballot. It’s why guys wait five years before even getting on, why it’s right that we can get as many as 15 opportunities to get it right, to provide historical context, to debate, to allow the voting body to change, get younger, welcome different perspectives and different prisms.
You know the players who should be pitied today? Guys like Kenny Lofton, whose career merited more than one year’s consideration but who will fall off the ballot because just 3.2 percent of the 569 voters checked his name. A guy like Bernie Williams (3.3 percent), who spent large chunks of his career certainly looking like a Hall of Famer. A guy like Dale Murphy, whose 15th and final appearance on a ballot yielded just 18.6 percent.
A few things to ponder about Piazza:
* Sixteen players have received between 50 and 70 percent of the vote their first time on the ballot. All 16 — every single one — eventually have gotten in. That includes luminaries such as Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella and Carlton Fisk.
* In Gary Carter’s first year of eligibility, 1998, he received 42.3 percent of the vote, which puts Piazza, at 57.8 percent, almost a lap ahead of him, a number Carter didn’t pass until his fourth year on the ballot (Carter ultimately made it in 2003, his sixth year on the ballot).
* He will get in. Eventually (well, assuming there isn’t any damning news story lurking around a news cycle somewhere). And once you’re in, nobody asks how you got there, or how long it took.
For the others, for Biggio and Tim Raines and Jeff Bagwell — and even for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens? In 1996, the last time the BBWAA pitched a shutout, there were six Hall of Famers on the ballot. In ’71, there were — remarkably — fifteen.
Say what you want about the BBWAA this morning — and you are entitled to say whatever you like — it usually, eventually, gets it right. And for those who favor ad hoc voting blocs like the various Veterans Committees, remember this: They have been snubbing Gil Hodges more than twice as long as the BBWAA did. They snubbed Buck O’Neil. And inducted the likes of Tom Yawkey. That isn’t exactly the proudest voting record, either.
So yes, it is perfectly fine to be angry this morning, to rail about the voting, to rip the voters, to crush the process. And though next year’s ballot has names that will be virtually impossible to ignore — Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas — that also means some guys who got votes this year won’t next. And the grumbling will resume. As well it should. And it’s beautiful music, too.
Say what you will about baseball: Nobody gets this mad unless they care deeply. Let that serve as the lasting evidence of something that not even steroids could kill off.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com