Given that nobody got elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this year, the New York Times’ Harvey Araton believes this would be a good time for the writers to bow out of voting for Cooperstown.

Araton writes:

The standard trade maxim that journalists should never be part of the story has been a longtime red flag in the process, especially in baseball, but never has it carried the weight it does now, in the age of players tainted by performance enhancement. If the exclusion of Pete Rose has more or less been a matter for the commissioner’s office to legislate, why leave it to reporters to determine what to do with the likes of Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds?

It’s baseball’s club, and reporters shouldn’t be part of the clubbiness. Let the Hall get together with Major League Baseball to figure out what to do about the mess the sport created with its willful ignorance when steroid use was rampant and not even tested for, indisputably altering statistical measures for enshrinement. Speaking of shrines, that’s another thing the news media should not be engaged in, elevating the general perception of Cooperstown to something more mystical than it really is.