Receding infamy

OK, first of all, stop that laughing. I am not the guy.

I am not the guy -- the poor, misguided, musta-been-snorting-Drano guy -- who left Derek Jeter off his Hall of Fame ballot. I don't even have a Hall of Fame ballot. So you can't blame me for being the lone cementhead who decided the best shortstop of his generation wasn't a first-ballot HOFer, and deprived Jeter of being a unanimous selection.

Of course, Jeter got in easily anyway, and Larry Walker, too, and for once there should be none of those tedious seamhead debates about whether someone's WAR or BABIP or BLT was truly Hall-worthy. Jeter and Walker were HOFers from the moment they put the glove down, and anyone who tries to argue otherwise is not anyone you need to take seriously.

Neither is anyone who tries to deny that the more the Steroids Era recedes in memory, the less hold it has on the judgment of the voters.

There has always been a puritanical streak to the guardians of the Hall, a sort of Cotton Mather grimness to their belief that the path to baseball heaven should be narrower than a bolo tie. Certain voters have used their ballot to enforce this belief, at times to an absurd degree. This despite all the drunks, racists and full-bore sociopaths who inhabit Cooperstown.

Also cheaters. Yes, there are cheaters, too, in the Hall.

And so it doesn't take long to look at this year's HOF voting to reach Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds on the list.

This time around they finished fourth and fifth in the tally, with Clemens getting 61 percent of the vote and Bonds 60.7. That's still 14 or so points shy of the 75 percent needed for entry -- Clemens missed by 56 votes, Bonds by 57 -- but it's yet another uptick over last year.

Anecdotal and circumstantial evidence makes it virtually an article of faith that both Bonds and Clemens juiced as the sun got low in the sky in their careers. Nonetheless, both were also widely acknowledged by that time to be the best player and one of the two or three best pitchers of their generation, respectively. And so barring them from the Hall becomes an omission too glaring to ignore.

Apparently more and more voters are starting to accept this rationale, as the Steroids Era becomes an actual definable Era and takes its contextual place in baseball's long history of trying to get over on the other guy. It's a tradition that goes back almost to the dawn of the game itself -- and that includes experiments with various magic potions.

To be sure, you can be affronted at the skewed numbers the Steroids Era produced. But in doing so, you also have to recognize that the numbers have always been skewed to one degree or another.

Veterans of the deadball era scoffed at the numbers put up once the ball got livelier. African-Americans scoff at the numbers put up by players who never had to face Satchel Paige, or pitch to Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston, or hold on base Cool Papa Bell. And the Steroids Era can't be put into proper context without acknowledging the unrestrained gobbling of amphetamines that helped the icons of the '60s, '70s and '80s get through those day games after night games.

Chemical enhancement is chemical enhancement, in other words.

And so as the Steroids Era becomes one with the deadball era and the segregation era and the bennies era, the likelihood that Bonds and Clemens will one day enter the Hall grows. It's only a matter of time.

Which is what all this is about in the first place.