Lincicome: Of all the halls, baseball’s is the most famous

Hall of fame season is coming, ready or not, nostalgia’s road trip. All sports have them, some with ceremonies and some with catering.

By my count there are 68 official sports halls of fame, some with their own buildings, some in garages and some in warehouses, though pickleball is planning to get its own museum soon.

I was in the Bowling Hall of Fame for a while, when it was in St. Louis sharing space with the Cardinals. It has since moved to Texas. I was not there because of my ability to bowl, although I did once roll a 218 game, but because a column I had written about pin boys was given a frame and space. An incidental distinction, but nice.

The NFL is going through its convoluted sorting shuffle, to be finalized during Super Bowl week The process is teasing candidates in the meantime from a list longer than a playbook. Likely at least a half dozen will make it, notably Drew Brees and, if I had a vote, Greg Olsen.

Already dismissed from the “contributors” honors list is the late Virginia McCaskey, one of 21 cut down to nine, although VMH still has a place on the work shirts of her beloved Bears.

As these things kind of all pile up at the same time, none generates the noise like baseball’s hall, the oldest and most debated, as if the honor is absolution for a career well played and a life well lived.

Only some of that is true. Many enshrinees (is that a word?) could not pass the character, sportsmanship and integrity bar, from the earliest — Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby — to the latest still pending — Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds most notably.

Pete Rose is a special case, the poster boy for baseball’s basic hypocrisy. The game is partnered with gamblers now. Stern moral judges then, baseball is only just now removing the ban on Rose and Joe Jackson to be eligible for Hall of Fame consideration.

Rose denied and then admitted betting on baseball, making no difference to his worthiness to join all the rogues and rascals already in Cooperstown. Jackson denied fixing games but did complain that the gamblers stiffed him. The lesson here is, hey, they all can’t be Ernie Banks.

Jackson and Rose will get another chance by next election cycle while, coming soon, Bonds and Clemens might get a final judgment.

Baseball writers, the voters, never agreed on the seriousness of the sins of Bonds and Clemens before they fell off the main ballot. Now it is up to something called the Contemporary Era ballot; that is players after 1980 who couldn’t get the writers’ votes. It maybe should be called the Corrections Ballot.

Dick Allen and Dave Parker got into the Hall that way and now Bonds and Clemens are among eight who will be judged by a panel of 16 players and executives. My guess is, they will not be forgiven. Bonds will have his 762 home runs and Clemens his 354 wins, but they will not have a plaque.

Bonds and Clemens were human enough to cheat and human enough to lie. And they were great before it became expedient to be human. Baseball left writers to judge the depth of dishonor, always a fuzzy instruction, as anyone who has faced a deadline is aware.

It would be easier if some artificial committee had banned all the steroid era suspects from consideration, as it did Rose — whose glory came before his shame — and as it did with Jackson — also never found guilty of anything — but baseball straddles morality and profit without blushing.

Their misconduct remains, stored in the evidence locker of diminishing outrage. The judges change and the general weariness of considering the Steroid Era grows.

That time seems a mossy relic now, nearly nostalgic, almost with a romance of its own, like vinyl or the afternoon newspaper. Any newspaper, come to that.

In a world where innocence is an illusion, guilt is diminished by cynicism. Every sin weighs the same. Apathy gives way to tolerance and the result is forgiveness. Arguments are offered with shrugs.

Of the eight on the corrections ballot, Dale Murphy and Don Mattingly — sinless and worthy — ought to be honored. Still time to do the right thing.