When Barry Bonds was plodding through the court case in which he was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, Bud Selig carefully and consistently avoided reacting upon hearing his name and the news attached to it.

Selig was in his later years as commissioner of Major League Baseball, and he was not about to let the news media or the rest of the public know how he felt about Bonds, who was widely viewed as a steroids cheat. Selig never commented on Bonds’ status, but I had the feeling that Selig would have been relieved had Bonds been convicted and sentence to prison, where he could no longer intrude on baseball.

The mere mention of Bonds’ name made Selig cringe. Some of those in Selig’s presence could feel that cringe from his body language. Talking to Selig on the telephone, his caller could feel the cringe through the phone.

Selig did not like Bonds, believing along with everyone else that he was guilty of having used performance-enhancing drugs and benefiting from his use in the last five years or so of his career.

How would Selig feel now, though, if he thought or knew that he might be responsible for enabling Bonds’ entry into the Hall of Fame?

That’s exactly what is happening as many voters, members of the Baseball Writers Association, have reconsidered their negative stance on Bonds and Roger Clemens.

The writers have been consistent in their refusal to vote for steroids cheats. Not that they would have been elected otherwise, but Rafael Palmeiro quickly fell off the ballot for lack of votes and Sammy Sosa is closely following him. Mark McGwire made it through his 10 years of eligibility but his annual percentage of votes was so low they needed a steroids boost.

In their first three years on the ballot, Bonds and Clemens helplessly watched their percentages remain stagnant in the mid-30s (75 percent needed for election). Then a year ago they jumped to the mid-40s.

Obviously some writers changed their minds, putting greater weight on their playing achievements and less on their alleged use of P.E.D.s. Now more will follow, thanks to Selig.

It wasn’t that Selig did something; it was something that was done to him. The former commissioner was elected to the Hall of Fame.

Whoa, some of the writers exclaimed. If the man who oversaw the steroids era and allowed it to flourish can be in the Hall of Fame, why can’t the players who used the P.E.D.’s be there with him. What’s good for one, they reasoned, should be good for the others.

It’s an interesting view¸ but I can offer two reasons to undermine it.

As with players, just because the voters made a mistake and elected someone who doesn’t merit being in the Hall, voters shouldn’t use that player’s election as an excuse to elect another inferior candidate. In other words, don’t compound the first mistake with a second.

Second, Selig was elected not by the writers but by the so-called veterans committee, a group designed by Hall officials to insure the election of someone like Selig, or the non-election of Marvin Miller. Just because the management voters who dominate that 16-man panel ignored wrongdoing like collusion and P.E.D.’s, it is not an excuse for writers to ignore players’ use of chemicals that enhanced their performance and their careers.

Some writers, however, fail to see that distinction. It’s highly unlikely that Bonds and Clemens will receive enough votes for election this year when the results of this year’s BBWAA voting are announced Jan. 18. But their percentages will rise sharply, creating the likelihood of election a year from now.

Once writers who have been reluctant to vote for steroids cheats see the trend in this year’s results, they will feel justified in joining in and put Bonds and Clemens over the top next year.

It would be appropriate for Bonds and Clemens to send Selig a thank you note. It would be more appropriate but just as unlikely for Selig to acknowledge his link to the impending election of Bonds and Clemens and respectfully renounce his election. That noble act wouldn’t excuse Selig’s tardy reaction to P.E.D.’s, but the statement it would make would be an exclamation point on what Selig repeatedly boasted was the best drug-testing program in sports.

ALL THE LATE NEWS THAT FITS

With my attention having been focused elsewhere, I belatedly came to the Selig-Bonds development, seeing it for the first time on page 1 of The New York Times last Tuesday. Having become unaccustomed to seeing such reporting in the Times, I sent the reporter, David Waldstein, an e-mail, saying it was the best baseball article I had seen in the Times in years.

Before writing this item, however, I decided to check to see if anyone had the article before the Times. As I learned from a Google search, everyone did. The Times’ article appeared nearly a month after the initial reports.

By placing the story on page 1, the Times was misleading its readers. Page 1 is for important stories, the most important of that day. This was an old story, a month old as I discovered.

Waldstein is not to be blamed for the late appearance of the article; He is not one of Times’ baseball reporters. Four weeks after the New York Daily News and the New York Post told their readers about the development, editors in the Times sports department got their heads out of soccer scores and assigned the Selig story, meeting the standard of all the news fit to print four weeks later.

THAT BLANKETY-BLANK HOF VOTER

Voting for the baseball Hall of Fame holds an uncontrollable fascination for many fans. Ryan Thibodaux of Oakland, Calif., is one of them. He tracks writers’ ballots and computes a running total of the ballots that writers disclose.

As of this writing, here is his tabulation (in percentages) based on the 177 ballots he has secured:

• Jeff Bagwell                   92.1
• Tim Raines                    91.5
• Ivan Rodriguez             82.5
• Vladimir Guerrero       74.6
• Trevor Hoffman           72.9
• Edgar Martinez            68.9
• Barry Bonds                  67.2
• Roger Clemens             66.7
• Mike Mussina               61.6
• Curt Schilling               53.7

In an e-mail, Thibodaux wrote:

“What usually happens from this point forward is that almost every player’s percentage will drop. The ballots tend to start getting more ‘Small Hall’-minded. The exception seems to be with closers. Their percentages tend to increase with later ballots. It may well be that Hoffman has a better chance of induction this year than Rodriguez, even though Rodriguez is polling better in these early days.”

Thibodaux added a bonus for his Twitter followers. He conducted a one-day poll on what his followers thought I would do with my ballot.

“As you must know, your ballots over recent years have looked very different from the average ballot. Because of that, people who care about and follow Hall of Fame happenings as I do (far more intensely than I should, I know), do indeed care about what choices you might make when voting season rolls around.

“You only voted for Griffey last year. There are no clear, first ballot Griffey-types this year. That leaves open the very real question of whether you might submit a blank ballot. Should anyone care? Perhaps not. But some of us do.”

To Thibodaux’s credit, he was very respectful with his questions and comments, unlike some others I hear from. However, I did not disclose my ballot to him, telling him I might in this column. I also told him:

“As for my HOF voting, in my first year as a voter, I voted for 10 players.” [That was and is the maximum, which some voters want the Hall to raise; why I don’t understand.] “By the time of my second vote, I realized that by voting for 10, I was saying I wanted to see 10 elected. What a horrible thought, to make people sit through 10 speeches in the hot July Cooperstown sun. I also realized that by having 10 players inducted on the same day lessened the honor for each. From then on I voted for only the players I considered the best of the elite.”

How did Thibodaux’s poll turn out? These were the results from the 792 Tweeters (I myself don’t tweet, which means I can’t communicate with them or the incoming president):

Blank Ballot:         49%

1-Player Ballot:     23%

2-Player Ballot:     19%

>2-Player Ballot:    9%

For what I believe is the first time in my Hall of Fame voting history, I voted for no one, sending in an unmarked ballot, with a note saying, “This ballot is intentionally blank.”