The Hall of Fame season got off to a good start earlier this week when the Hall’s 16-man Golden Era committee elected none of the 10 candidates on the ballot. Only a day later, though, the Baseball Writers Association of America spoiled that strong start by voting to recommend to the Hall’s board of directors that it raise from 10 to 12 the limit on the number of players a voter can mark on the ballot.

In case it’s not clear, I oppose the election of players by any of the Hall’s various veterans’ committees, and I see no reason to allow writers to vote for more than 10 candidates. If anything, I would favor lowering the limit.

Nine players appeared on the Golden Era ballot: Dick Allen (is anyone still around who knew him as Richie?), Tony Oliva (who even longer ago was known as Pedro). Jim Kaat, Gil Hodges (still the darling of surviving Brooklyn fans), Maury Wills, Minnie (five-decade) Minoso, Ken Boyer, Luis Tiant and Billy Pierce.

Allen and Oliva each fell one vote short of the 12 votes needed for election. Kaat missed by two votes.

Nothing against any of them or any of the six other players on the ballot, but they had 15 years of eligibility on the writers’ ballot beginning five years after retirement and didn’t make it. Why do they get yet another chance?

Could the writers have made a mistake? Let’s look at the vote-getting history of the three leading vote-getters in the Golden Era election:

Allen began by getting 3.7 percent of the writers’ vote and didn’t reach 10 percent until his fourth year on the ballot and never reached 20 percent.

Oliva attained 40 percent of the vote only three times, reached his high mark of 47.3 percent in his seventh try and finished his candidacy at 36.2 percent.

Kaat didn’t reach 20 percent until his fourth year on the ballot, slipped under 20 percent in his eighth year and concluded his candidacy at 26.2 percent.

These were the most attractive candidates considered by the Historical Overview committee, which the BBWAA appoints. Chances were slim that any of the players would be elected, but two nearly were. Do Allen and Oliva belong in an induction ceremony in July with Randy Johnson, John Smoltz and Pedro Martinez, who are expected to be elected by the writers in their first year on the ballot?

Bill Mazeroski is one of the typical players who got to the Hall of Fame via a veterans committee. The former Pittsburgh second baseman was elected in 2001 even though his 15-year run of percentages on the writers’ ballot read 6.1, 8.3, 8.6, 9.5, 6.7, 12.8, 18.4, 22.0, 23.5, 30.3, 33.5, 30.0, 29.5, 32.1 and 42.3.

The increase in Mazeroski’s percentages, from the first five years to the last six, was interesting, but he exceeded half of the necessary 75 percent only in his final year on the ballot.

Mazeroski was the best defensive second baseman of his time, one of the best in major league history. He was an excellent clutch hitter. But he was not a Hall of Famer, even with his World Series-winning home run against the New York Yankees in 1960.

He became a Hall of Famer, the story goes, because Joe L. Brown, the former long-time Pirates’ general manager, was chairman of the veterans committee, and in the way the committee worked in those days, it was his turn, if he chose, to select a candidate.

At the other end of the spectrum, no deserving player has ever been deprived of entry into the Hall of Fame because of a limit of 10 imposed on voters. Yet, some writers have pushed for elimination of the limit or an increase in the number.

Jack O’Connell, BBWAA secretary-treasurer, told me that 50 percent of the voters last year used all 10 of their ballot spots compared with a previous high of 22 percent.

I suspect that last year’s stuffed ballots were intended to enhance the argument to change or eliminate the limit of 10.

At a national writers’ meeting last Tuesday the writers voted 59 to 21 to recommend that the limit be raised from 10 to 12.

I don’t understand the desire or the need to raise the limit. In my first year of eligibility to vote, I checked off the maximum of 10 names, apparently flush with having the vote for the first time. Before my next vote a year later, I realized that by voting for 10 I was saying I wanted 10 players to be elected at once, creating an induction ceremony with 10 players on the Cooperstown stage all taking turns speaking into the Hall of Fame microphone.

Not only would that make for an awfully long afternoon, but it would also dilute from the experience of each player.

Even more critical, it would speak to the standards of the voters.

In a column last week in The New York Times, Tyler Kepner wrote that the primary problem with the limit of 10 is the presence on the ballot of players involved in or suspected of being involved in performance-enhancing drugs, particularly Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

They are not likely to be elected, Kepner wrote, but their presence clogs the ballot. That, frankly, is a silly notion.

If a writer wants ignore PEDs and to vote for Bonds and Clemens, which is the writer’s prerogative, he still has eight spots on his ballot. Those should be more than enough to give the voter enough boxes to vote for whom he wants.

If he wants to vote for more than eight others, he should re-examine the players he plans to vote for. Under my way of viewing players, I couldn’t possibly find even eight players worthy of election.

The Hall of Fame is for the elite, maybe the elite of the elite. It is not for good players or even very good players. It’s up to the voter to decide who belongs, and if he thinks more belong than he is allowed to vote for, he should think again.

In lamenting the clogged ballot, Kepner cites the case of Fred McGriff, who has good career statistics but whose percentage of votes has dropped to 11.7. Contrary to what Kepner might think, McGriff is not endangered because of a clogged ballot but because nearly 90 percent of the voters don’t think he belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Writing about the people who want to change or eliminate the maximum, Kepner said, “Some of our most thoughtful members make up the committee, and whatever they decide will come from a good place. They cared deeply about this.”

For Kepner’s information, writers who have been doing this job a lot longer than he and some of those other people have cared deeply for many more years about a lot of issues involving the BBWAA.