Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. were both elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame today but everyone is talking about one man who wasn’t elected and one man who elected no one.

Mark McGwire finished ninth in the balloting, receiving 128 of a possible 545 votes. He, of course, has been under a cloud of suspension for using performance enhancing drugs.

Paul Ladewski, a columnist for The Daily Southtown in Illinois, voted for zero of the large selection of baseball players that he had to choose from. He mailed in an empty ballot.

I’ll get to McGwire in a moment. First, though, I have a bone to pick with Ladewski who says he has doubts about anyone who played during the Steroids Era. Well, Ladewski, I have doubts about your motives.

The vote, Ladewski said, is about upholding the Hall of Fame’s standards. I think what he’s doing calls into doubt the Hall of Fame’s standards of who they allow to vote. The privilege that Ladewski holds just because he’s a member of the baseball writers association exists for him and writers like him to vote for baseball players that they feel are worthy of being inducted into the Hall of Fame. It does not exist for him to make political statements or to show off his morality. All that he proves by sending in a blank ballot is that he’s a closed minded fool who has made up his mind, despite any evidence, that players of the so-called steroid era are all dirty. And I couldn’t disagree with him more.

I loathe the fact that baseball was tainted in the 90’s by players who were obviously juicing. I also loathe the argument that you can’t fault the players for using steroids because even though they were illegal in the United States they were never banned in baseball. Hogwash! Rape isn’t “banned in baseball” but you don’t see that tolerated on the field!

All that said, I do think McGwire and subsequently Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds should be voted into the Hall of Fame, though it does pain me to say it.

They didn’t put an asterisk next to Roger Maris because he played in the era of 162 games, why start sticking asterisks on those who played in the era of steroids. It’s just another era that baseball has gone through, like the “dead ball” era. In fact, I would love to know the number of home runs those hitters I mentioned above hit against pitchers who were also on steroids. Perhaps the playing field was a lot more even than we think! We just don’t know.

Baseball, much like world history, has gone through several eras that we’re not proud of. The same way there are no asterisks in the history books next to presidents who were elected during the era when women couldn’t vote, or asterisks in the baseball record books from the time when blacks couldn’t play, there should be not records abolished from the steroid era.

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Here is Ladewski’s defense of his position