There are a total of 539 baseball writers who get to vote on whether or not a player gets into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown.

 I, obviously, am not one of those voting writers - but every year when the hall of fame elections come around, I like to pretend I'm one.

 This year, had I had my druthers, I would've cast two votes for election to Cooperstown and two alone - the first would've been for former Montreal Expos outfielding start Andre Dawson, and the second would've been the best second baseman of certainly "my" generation, Roberto Alomar.

 Dawson, thankfully, was finally admitted to the hall and will be enshrined later this year.

 Alomar was not so lucky, falling a handful of votes short of getting in his first time on the ballot.

 Unfortunately, this means that the Toronto Blue Jays' best shot (for the foreseeable future) to have a first-ballot hall of famer enshrined in Cooperstown has passed.

 Alomar was, for my money, the best Blue Jay to ever don the uniform and, frankly, even with his infamous spitting incident, if he's not a first-ballot hall of famer, I don't know who is.

 The man almost single-handedly changed the way we think of second basemen - he was the modern case study, displaying that players at that position could, yes, be agile and nothing short of spectacular defensively, while still being an offensive dynamo, capable of driving in 100 runs.

 It was a breath of fresh air after a decade of the likes of Steve Sax.

 Alomar is a hall of famer and will, almost assuredly, be elected next year.

 As much as Alomar is a sure-fire hall of famer, Mark McGwire, in my mind, is not.

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 Baseball's once single-season home-run king, who swatted 70 home runs in a record-setting 1998 season, was once again crushed at the ballot box, receiving a fraction of the votes needed in order to get into Cooperstown.

 While never confirmed, the swirl of steroid use and his unwillingness to testify before Congress about drug use clung 'round his neck, shackling him outside the hall's doors.

 And, of course, following yet another reeling performance at the ballot box, McGwire finally came clean in an interview, admitting that, yes, he had used performance enhancers for much of his career, including 1998.

 This is perhaps the ultimate definition of closing the barn door long after the horse has not only left, but has also run down the road, wound up in Las Vegas, changed his name to Quick Draw McGraw and then, unwittingly and tragically, stumbled into the glue factory to meet his ultimate fate.

 And to have this revelation come forth within about a week of McGwire, for the fourth year of his eligibility, only get just over 100 votes makes it an even more difficult pill to swallow.

 From this seat, is sure looks like Big Mac and his advisors have come to realize that he only has a little over a decade left on the ballot to get into the baseball hall of fame, and that if he wants to get in through the front door, then he'd better start doing some serious pandering in an effort to get some of us jaded writers back in his corner.

 The problem for McGwire is that I don't think it's going to work.

 Four years ago, when he was called before a United States congressional hearing about steroids in baseball, McGwire had the opportunity then and there - having recently retired from the game - to be up front and candid about his use.

 And yes, while the public would have been disappointed, they also would have empathized with the pressures of playing in the post-1994-strike baseball world and they surely would have blamed Major League Baseball for not properly legislating against steroid use in the first place, in effect denying that the game and its players had a drug problem.

 All he had to do was be up front and answer the questions put to him - not bleat out that he wasn't there to talk about the past.

 McGwire had his chance to establish himself as a person worthy of hall consideration, despite all questions of professional ethics surrounding his drug use - but he didn't take advantage of the opportunity.

 Now, right or wrong, I'm not sure any explanation, nor any amount of tears, will be enough to turn the hearts and minds of baseball's voting writers - and that's something he'll have to learn to live with.

posted on 01/19/10