For the first time, Terry Pluto opted out of voting for inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
“I was always thrilled to vote for the Hall of Fame,” he says.  But this year, he simply never mailed back his ballot.

The reason was simple. “By me just walking away, I’m saying, ‘I don’t know what to do with these steroid guys.’”

“These steroid guys” include Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa.

“The list has been growing. … There’s five of them on this ballot. And baseball has this ‘integrity of the game’ clause, where we’re (baseball writers) supposed to be the protectors of the integrity of the game,” says Pluto. But “where does steroids fit with that?”

Not so simple
Pluto says he used to have a moral clarity about it. “For a long time my policy was, if your name appeared on the Mitchell report or if you were suspended for using steroids, I wouldn’t vote for you. But now there’s becoming so many guys and more are coming.”

That likely includes Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez, two of the biggest names in the game – both tainted by steroid use.

Meanwhile, Pluto regrets holding onto his ballot this year.

What his non-vote cost
And by not voting, he contributed to two players he likes – neither tainted by steroid claims – falling short of the 75 percent of the votes they needed. One is Detroit pitcher Jack Morris; the other is Astros second-baseman Craig Biggio.

Pluto expects to vote for both next year.

Meanwhile, he’d like the Hall of Fame to stop leaning on the “integrity of the game” clause.  “Frankly, I wish the Hall of Fame would issue a (policy) that, ‘We don’t care if they used steroids or not; just vote your conscience.’”

And Pluto says there may be a generational divide among those consciences. Younger writers seemed more open to inducting Bonds and the others – steroids or not.

“They kind of grew up with that (steroid-taint in baseball) and say, … ‘I’m not going to play moral policeman.’”

Pluto expects, though, that next year’s ballot will include some can’t-miss names like pitcher Greg Maddox and, perhaps, slugger Frank Thomas. So he doesn’t expect a repeat of this year – when there will simply be no Class of 2013.