Long before he was a three-term governor of New York State and a prominent politician in the Democratic Party and the country, Mario Cuomo was a minor league baseball player. When he was completing his third term as governor, Cuomo thought he might be finishing where he started, not in the minor leagues but in baseball. He thought he might become commissioner of Major League Baseball.

Just like some other prominent people, Cuomo was conned by Bud Selig’s shell game of denial. After being a leader in the successful move to oust Fay Vincent as commissioner in 1992, Selig repeatedly – almost on a daily basis – denied that he wanted to be commissioner.

At the time, he was the acting, or interim, commissioner, though he denied that, too, and constantly proclaimed he didn’t want the job. Cuomo was apparently among those who believed Selig, that is, fell for his verbal mirage. We learn this from a story related by Vincent the day after Cuomo died last week.

Vincent wasn’t suggesting anything evil about Selig, but he told the story because he thought I might find it interesting:

“In the first year or so after I left baseball a reporter called me and said, ‘The baseball owners are considering naming Mario Cuomo as your successor; what advice would you have for him?’ I said I would have advice for him if he asked me, but I’m not going to give him advice through the newspapers.

“Cuomo called me and said he thought I was rude to him. I said how was I rude? He said, ‘You refused to give me advice. I said no, I didn’t say that. I said I would offer you advice but not through the newspapers. He said, ‘Well. I think that was rude.’ I told him if you were indeed being considered and wanted to call me, I’d be happy to talk to you. But I told him he wasn’t going to get the job.

“He called me and I told him no matter what you have heard, they’re not going to give you the job. You’re too strong. The owners don’t want a strong commissioner. He said, ‘I’m told I’m the leading candidate.’ I said you’re not going to get the job. He said, ‘But if they want me, can I call you and ask your advice?’ I said yes.

“He never called. They were telling everyone they were the leading candidate. They told George Mitchell and I met with him. They told George Bush. There was a university president or a former university president they told. That was the way Bud was playing it. No matter what they were telling anyone, Bud wanted the job and no one else was going to get it.”

That Cuomo and others believed he was a candidate for the job was apparent from a news report in June 1994. Cuomo, the report said, “has surfaced as a candidate for the commissioner’s slot. The governor had no comment Thursday about the opening.”

When rumors had been floated in the past about Cuomo running for president and going to the United States Supreme Court, “Cuomo always shot them down, the report noted. “But that was when he had the promises of steady employment; come January, Cuomo will be updating his resume and leaving Albany.”

In other words, the report was suggesting, since Cuomo wasn’t shooting down the baseball possibility, he must think there’s something to it.

Cuomo, however, wound up in the same used trash bin as the other “leading candidates” who allowed themselves to be fooled.

Take Arnold Weber, for example. The retiring president of Northwestern University at the time, Weber was said to be the leading candidate when the commissioner search committee suspended its activity in January 1994.

When Bill Bartholomay, chairman of the Atlanta Braves, called Weber to tell him, Weber supposedly told Bartholomay “to go jump in the lake.” Bartholomay has denied that Weber said such a thing, but when I gave Weber an opportunity last May to register a matching denial, his spokesman said, “He’d prefer not to comment on this.”

Then there was George Bush, who was yet to be president. Bush was managing partner of the Texas Rangers and was prepared to be commissioner. Actually, he was more than prepared. He wanted the job, and he let Selig know it.

Selig denies this story, but too many people know it to be true for Selig to dismiss it. As time moved ahead, Selig kept stalling Bush. For his own reasons, Selig wasn’t ready to declare his willingness or his desire to be commissioner. Perhaps he wanted the owners to twist his arm some more.

Bush had his own reasons to want to know what Selig wanted. The Republican Party in Texas wanted him to run for governor and needed to know if he would. Bush preferred commissioner to governor and was reluctant to give up on his choice.

He kept telling Selig he needed an answer, not knowing Selig’s personal predicament. The Texas GOP persisted, Selig resisted. Finally, Bush could wait no longer, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Cuomo, like Bush, also went from baseball to politics, though unlike Bush, he resisted the lure of the White House.

Accepting a $2,000 signing bonus from Pittsburgh, Cuomo played the outfield for a year in Class D, hitting .244, before being hit by a pitch in the back of the head. Returning to school, Cuomo became a lawyer and subsequently a politician. Could he have become the president had he chosen to run? We will never know. We do know, however, that he did not become commissioner.

THE ANNUAL DEBATE IS ABOUT TO BEGIN

This is the time of the baseball year that rivals the World Series. Baseball fans eagerly await the last week of October to learn which team will become World Series champions. They await the first week of January to find out who will make the Hall of Fame.

Writing this before election results are announced, I don’t know who will be elected, but I could guess the names of three new Hall of Famers, all pitchers – Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz. Others? That depends on the writers’ voting philosophy.

Three basic philosophies have developed in recent years:

• How does a writer view voting for players who have been implicated in or suspected of use of performance-enhancing drugs?
• Does a writer vote for a few candidates, only the best of the best, the elite, or does he vote for the maximum allowed, 10, which in the future may grow to 12?
• Does a voter base his selections on a variety of factors that he has always used, including his non-statistical impressions of a player or does he use the relatively new metrics, such as WAR (wins above replacement)?

Unless there has been a drastic change in thinking among the voters, the best-known steroids suspects won’t be elected this year. A year ago Mark McGwire drew the lowest percentage of votes (11.0) in his seven years on the ballot. In their second year on the ballot, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa saw their percentages drop, Sosa’s 7.2 falling perilously close to removal from the ballot. Rafael Palmeiro was eliminated last year in his fourth year.

Craig Biggio fell two votes short of election last year and will very likely make it this year despite reports that former teammates said he used steroids. Mike Piazza is in a similar position, and Jeff Bagwell is not far behind.

There has been a movement among some writers recently to eliminate the rule that limits voters to 10 selections. Why any writer needs more than 10 lines on the ballot is beyond me. I suggest that any voter who wants to vote for more than 10 players reconsider his standards for Hall of Fame election.

The Hall of Fame should be for the best of the best, not for the very good. It’s hard to believe that if a writer votes for 10, 12 or 15 players he finds all 10, 12 or 15 on an equal level.

Nevertheless, the writers are pushing to lift the limit. Jack O’Connell, secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers Association of America, told me that last year half of the 571 writers who voted listed the maximum of 10. At last month’s BBWAA meeting the writers voted to recommend to the Hall’s board of directors that the maximum be raised to 12.

As if it’s not bad enough that the writers want to raise or eliminate the maximum, we have people telling us how to vote. We have long had people telling us we get it wrong, whether it’s voting for the Hall of Fame or post-season awards, but I have always felt these critics are jealous, that they want to be the voters. To them I say they should have become baseball writers for newspapers.

But now there are Internet writers who don’t have the vote saying whom we should vote for. The latest is Brian Kenny of the MLB Network, who wrote a column last week explaining why Curt Schilling should be in the Hall of Fame.

I don’t believe Schilling belongs in the Hall of Fame, but I am not alone in that belief. Last year 403 of the 571 voters agreed with me and didn’t vote for the former pitcher. Only 29.2 percent of the voters made a mark next to Schilling’s name on the ballot.

It was that vote presumably that prompted Kenny to write the column with the headline “The Curt Schilling HOF Mystery.”

Why is it a mystery? Apparently because Schilling, in Kenny’s view, measures favorably with players already in the Hall of Fame. What measurements does Kenny use? How about ERA+ Post-1945 (minimum: 2500 IP), WAR and WAR7?

In all candor, in the interest of full disclosure, I admit I used none of those modern metrics. It’s bad enough that heretofore unused metrics got Bert Blyleven into the Hall of Fame, let’s not pollute the place with more statistical legerdemain.

Kenny, of course, is not the first to suggest that writers use metrics such as WAR to determine players who should be elected to the Hall of Fame. If we adopted Kenny’s system, though, we wouldn’t need voters. Jane Forbes Clark and her board of directors could compile rankings of whatever metrics they chose to use and decide where to draw the line: those above the line make it, those below it, better luck next year.

Kenny suggests the writers lack consistency in their voting. I am not arguing that the writers are perfect in their voting, but there’s good reason why there is no consistency among the entire group. The writers vote individually, not as a bloc. The 571 writers who voted last year didn’t get together before they voted and decide whom they should vote for and then cast their ballots in unison.

On the other hand, each voter could be consistent with his own votes, and Kenny wouldn’t know it. He might not agree with all of their votes, but each writer has his own reasons for voting or not voting for a player, and WAR7 might not be among those reasons.