Hall of Fame balloting sure to bring about another storm

When it comes to an individual's Hall of Fame ballot, there is no correct answer -- despite the annual venom spewed on all sides of the steroid issue.

I can only tell you I didn't vote for Mark McGwire last year and I won't this year.

I will vote for Andre Dawson, Jim Rice, Rich Gossage, Lee Smith and Bert Blyleven, give or take a Jack Morris or a Tim Raines.

But what people really want to know is what will happen in five years to Roger Clemens, who many of us with ballots have long suspected of enhancing.

I put Clemens in a category with Barry Bonds, phenomenal talents who already were Hall of Famers before they appeared to start using, unlike players such as McGwire and Sammy Sosa, who never would have been superstars without bulking up.

So how will I vote on Clemens? I reserve the right to decide until I have to five years from now, and hope information between now and then makes the decision more obvious.

There's a small segment of the electorate that votes as though steroids never existed, and so it's difficult to predict how voters will react to particular players.

The message last year, however, was loud and clear when McGwire received only 23 percent of the vote.

The numbers

Goose Gossage made a huge jump from 64 percent to 71 a year ago and is a lock to get in next month.

Jim Rice (63) figures to get close and maybe even in this time, while Andre Dawson (56) should jump into the 60s, putting him in position to go in the following year with only Rickey Henderson a slam-dunk in 2009.

The stat

Of the 28 men with more than 1,000 career extra-base hits, every player eligible for the Hall of Fame is in except Andre Dawson.

Those in already are Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Lou Gehrig, Frank Robinson, Carl Yastrzemski, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, George Brett, Jimmie Foxx, Ted Williams, Eddie Murray, Dave Winfield, Cal Ripken, Reggie Jackson, Mel Ott, Mike Schmidt, Rogers Hornsby and Ernie Banks.

Mitchell Report

Forgive me George Mitchell for questioning the use of Brian Roberts' name in your report based on hearsay, now that Roberts has admitted to using steroids one time.

But forgetting for a second that I'm a moron -- which my wife says is impossible -- just because I picked the wrong guy to use as an example, it neither changes the fact that some players may have been wrongly accused, nor does it alter the insignificance of the document.

This report was supposed to somehow define the steroid era. Instead, it barely scratches the surface, and raises more questions than it answers about how widespread the drug use is even today, never mind 10 years ago.

Still, as someone who has railed against the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports for a long time -- not just when it became popular to do so -- I would have been in favor of the report had it done more than nail dozens of jaywalkers while the proverbial bank robbers skated.

Without any discussion of the role Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa played in creating the steroid explosion -- and therefore the part Bud Selig played in trumpeting it -- this report is incomplete.

It has served to do little more than make Selig feel better about himself, and embarrass a small sampling of players.

Home Run Derby

Not only does Selig refuse to acknowledge his role, but Tuesday he denied baseball was slow to react under his watch.

It's laughable.

I can remember standing in the Cubs' locker room in the mid-'90s and playing the steroid game with team members, as we looked around the room and picked out the ones growing by leaps and shots.

I could see it then, but owners and the commissioner couldn't?

Look, we're all guilty of not doing enough, but I was asking questions about steroids in 1998 when everyone in the game was cheering the home run explosion, no one more so than Bud Selig.

And today we see players apologizing left, right and up the middle, but we're still waiting for the owners and the commissioner to admit they enabled drug use, ignored it, and paid big dollars to keep it rolling.

What's stopping them?

Ivan Boldirev-ing

While others around the Blackhawks talk about how proud they are of the team's effort after defeats -- like it's a Pee Wee team -- or make excuses about facing hot goaltenders, it takes a 19-year-old Jonathan Toews to say, "Right now, we don't hate to lose enough. That's why we aren't coming out with 2 points very often."

And that's why the kid's going to make a heck of a captain.

Short story

Scott Ostler of the S.F. Chronicle: "I hope George Mitchell sends Kirk Radomski a nice holiday gift, because without Rattin' Radomski, Mitchell could have scribbled his entire report on the back of an airline barf bag."

Well spent

Wheaton e-mailer Eric Krull, on all the mediocre Cubs listed in the Mitchell Report: "These guys were below average even for the Cubs. Imagine how bad they would have been without the drugs.''

And finally …

Comedian Alex Kaseberg, on Jessica Simpson watching boyfriend Tony Romo lose to the Eagles: "It was a little embarrassing when Jessica put on a No. 9 jersey, looked down at it, and said, 'So why am I wearing No. 6?' "

brozner@dailyherald.com