(
)
My Hall of Fame ballot sits on my desk as I wait longer than ever to apply check marks, stalling for a clarity I know is never coming.
I wish, like so many of my brethren, I could be ironclad: Vote in none of those touched by illegal performance enhancers or ignore the drug cloud and simply select those who I believe crossed the borderline into immortality.
Because, you know, that is what each individual voter is doing: Establishing a distinct conceptual fingerprint of what it takes to get into the Hall and then trying to determine if the candidates have pushed into that imagined end zone. Who gets your vote? Who do you think belongs in the same club with Ruth and Gehrig, Aaron and Mays?
According to the Hall, just 208 players have been selected of the roughly 17,700 who have worn a major league uniform, or about one percent. So voters are trying to come to peace with a one percent that has turned as politically charged as when Occupy Wall Street separated the 99 percent from the one.
In the past it has always bothered me when someone would say something like, “Why did you vote against Dale Murphy?” Because you don’t vote against anybody. You vote for those you think are deserving. Saying I voted against Murphy makes it sound like I have denigrated his career. I think Murphy is in the two percent — that he is better than 98 percent of the players who have ever played. That is hardly an insult. He simply fell short of my personal borderline.
But the Steroid Era has changed the debate. If you do not, for example, put a check mark next to Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds — players with blatant Hall credentials — then you are clearly voting against them. We can debate Alan Trammell, Tim Raines and Jack Morris and where they fall on your personal borderline. But a seven-time Cy Young and a seven-time MVP teeter on no borderline; they would be two of the more no-brainer candidates in the history of the ballot.
If, for example, I do not put a check next to Bonds, I am literally ignoring the best player I ever saw play. And I am not talking about the inflated — in all ways — Bonds who dominated the game late in his career. But the lithe, multi-skilled phenomenon of 1986-1998.
I do believe the story, which has since been reported in at least two books, that Bonds saw the attention, love and dollars going to the freak show of Mark McGwire vs. Sammy Sosa at a time when he and Ken Griffey Jr. were viewed as the best players in the game. Bonds reacted by walking on the vial side. At that moment, he already was a three-time MVP and eight-time All-Star and Gold Glove winner, with 411 homers, 445 steals and a .966 OPS.
If Bonds were a likeable character, we might universally see the Greek tragedy in the player with all the natural powers falling victim to his own ego and greed, becoming bigger and smaller than ever at the same time.
McGwire, conversely, completed the first half of his career — through age 30 and 4,006 plate appearances — as a very good, but injury-plagued player. His batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage slash line of .250/.362/.507 is not all that different from the .259/.356/.507 line that belongs to Mike Napoli. Then, at age 31 to the end of his career — a time when historically his skills should have been in retreat — McGwire put up a .278/.430/.683 line. The resulting 1.113 OPS has been bettered by just two players in history: Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. Thus, to vote for McGwire, I would have to act as if the drugs he has now admitted taking did not alter the arc of his career from a very good to legendary player.
This is why I have no clarity as that ballot sits there: Because I think Bonds is a Hall of Famer and McGwire is not. I have no fixed rules about those touched by illegal performance enhancers. It has become a year-round job (obsession?) to gather information and talk to people within the game I respect, and try to see what it all means to that borderline of mine.
Does this make me judge and jury? Of course it does. What person who votes for anything is not judge and jury?
I hear all the time that many people vote for president based on with whom they would most like having a beer. Seems like pretty specious judge and jurying for something far more important than the Baseball Hall of Fame. I sense the vast majority of Hall voters go through a more rigorous mental checklist.
In the end, you just have to come to peace that there is not such a thing as a perfect ballot — especially in this age — and you cannot please everyone with your thought processes and choices. Again, in what vote do you? I am pretty sure that 47 percent of the electorate just thought the country made a colossal mistake in re-electing Barack Obama.
So I respect that many folks do not see Edgar Martinez as a Hall of Famer because he was mainly a DH who did not compile huge career stats. But I do because I think hitting a moving round ball with a moving round bat is among the most difficult feats in sport, and I am hard-pressed to think of five players in my lifetime who did that with more consistent genius than Martinez.
I respect that many folks do not see Curt Schilling as a Hall of Famer because he did not amass historic and/or large numbers. But I do because I think he had 15 seasons that ranged from very good to great and if I were making a very short list of pitchers I would want starting a game for my life, Schilling (11-2 with a 2.29 ERA in 19 postseason outings) would be on it.
Certainly the passion is greater on the pros and cons when it comes to players who have been proven or suspected to have used illegal performance enhancers. Many have clarity on this issue and, thus, their vote. I do not. I suspect I never will.
joel.sherman@nypost.com