Mike Celizic

My Hall of Fame ballot arrived in the mail last week. I haven’t filled it out yet, but when I do, I’ll be checking the box next to Mark McGwire’s name.

According to the Associated Press, I’m in the minority among my fellow 10-year members of the Baseball Writers Association of America. The great majority of those surveyed — I was not one of them — said they would ignore McGwire’s 70 home-run season, his 583 lifetime dingers and the rest of his credentials because, in their minds, he took steroids. In other words, he cheated.

It’s not clear how many voters are making a statement by leaving him off this year’s ballot but intend to vote for him in coming years. But a substantial number feel that way. Hall-of-Fame voters are funny that way. Some always find a reason not to vote for one player or another, especially in the first year of eligibility. If Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron weren’t elected unanimously, you can’t expect McGwire to be.

But he belongs in the Hall because he meets the criteria. He hit a lot of home runs, and he didn’t break any of baseball’s rules in doing it. If I could uncover a reason not to vote for  him, I’d be on it like a leach, but I can’t. Since I don’t believe in making players wait a year to vote for them, I can’t not vote for McGwire.

I’ll also vote for Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken, the other two slam-dunks among the list of newly eligible players. I won’t vote for  any other the other newbies, either now or later. But I will continue to vote for Jim Rice and, with Bruce Sutter getting in last year, I’m adding Goose Gossage. If Sutter’s in, Gossage has to be.

But that’s an issue for another day. Between now and the end of December, hundreds of baseball writers will be marking their ballots and sending them in. And no name on the list is fraught with more controversy than McGwire’s.

To me, it should be easy: he’s a Hall-of-Famer, end of argument. I know I’m in the minority on this, but, then, I’ve never been one to swim with the current. In this case, though, it seems to me I’m one of the few voters who’s applying cold logic to this; most are turning this vote over to their emotions, and we all know how messy that can be.

The case against McGwire, such as it is, states that he probably took performance-enhancing drugs in the same sense, and I use “probably” in the same sense that I would in saying, “Boston’s fine harbor probably had something to do with it’s being an important colonial town.” Therefore, he doesn’t belong in Cooperstown.

I don’t get it. I’ve said this before, but since so few people seem to understand the logic of the situation, I’ll say it again: McGwire didn’t do anything that was against the rules of the game of baseball. I know that steroids were and are against the moral code of many of  the people who say they won’t vote for him — at least not on the first ballot — but if baseball didn’t care, I don’t, either.

McGwire almost certainly isn’t the first player who “probably” used steroids to be on the ballot, and when and if he gets in, I’d lay my house against a burger-flipper’s paycheck that at least one of the people in ahead of him also used sports’ magic potion. Any time a substance that will improve your game is out there and isn’t against the rules, you can bet athletes are using it.

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