McGwire will ruin my prediction - for a while, anyway.

For a generation, Dave Kingman held acclaim as the eligible baseball player with the most home runs in his career who wasn't in the hall of fame. I predicted that Jose Canseco would replace Kingman when he became eligible. It looks like Mark McGwire may hold that distinction for a few years.

McGwire, unlike Canseco, deserves to be in the HOF. He was one of the greatest home run hitters ever to play the game, if not the best. Ultimately, though, the HOF is a private organization, so they have the right to determine eligibility on whatever basis they choose. Still, to overlook a legitimately great career because of something that happened during 'an era of moral question' is, in my opinion, a rather shithead thing to do.

Of course, would you expect anything less from the place that excludes the all-time hits leader because of some moral bullshit he did after he was a player?

Here's what I think: baseball is concerned about the political ramifications of voting in an American who exercised his civil rights to Congress. I guess I don't blame them for worrying about the government, but it's too bad that the guys who vote for the HOF will likely kiss Congress's asses to demonstrate proper worry! The steroid thing is just a convenient controversy.

Oh well, I doubt any of them have ever been mistaken for Edwin R. Murrow.

What bothers me is that my prediction will now predictably be incorrect! What's worse is that it will be because a bunch of guys who've talked about this for hours while getting smashed on the job question McGwire's ethics!

It won't denigrate Ripken's and Gwynn's first ballot selections. This just happens to be a class year in which three eligible players deserve the recognition based on their careers. Canseco is also eligible for the first time. He shouldn't make it. He was a very good young player, but his career, in the end, was pretty disappointing. Not so for McGwire. He was a generational hero who, in retrospect, may not have been the best role model behind closed doors. The same could be said about Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb, but those guys are already in.

It never was a secret that McGwire used performance enhancing products. He had some stuff that the Olympics and organized track prohibited, but baseball was silent at the time. It made some news, but it happened before the year he hit 25 home runs in both leagues, and fans' jaws dropped. All he could do was play his best, and that's what we, as fans, always got from McGwire. He hit 583 home runs in his career, and broke Maris's record! Compared to Canseco's 462, or Kingman's 442, he is a Hemilayan among Smokeys!

My kudos to the writers who have the balls to vote for McGwire instead of mistaking exercising one's rights with guilt, as the HOF would be Constitutionally required to recognize if it weren't a private organization.

Baseball loved McGwire when he was one of its biggest money-makers, but it appears those same people are likely to vote that subsequent controversy, and an obsequious gesture to Twain's nemisis, will leave McGwire on the outside looking in - undeservedly.

That's my take.