My blank Hall of Fame ballot ignited a firestorm of outrage leading to the announcement last week of three new Hall of Famers. If they were still burning people at the stake, I’d have been burned at the Cooperstown stake. These misguided souls, however, would have been as wrong as the good people of Salem, Mass., in the witch-burning days of Arthur Miller‘s play “The Crucible.”

I was besieged with requests for radio, television and podcast interviews, and I was a favorite target of tweeters as if I was the weekly object of President Donald Trump’s tempestuous tweets.

Most interestingly – and most ignorantly – more than a few people called for – urged – the Baseball Writers Association to revoke my voting privilege.

Sorry, but that isn’t going to happen.

The only writer who has ever lost his vote is Dan Le Batard, the Miami writer, who gave his 2014 Hall of Fame ballot to Deadspin.com after failing to find a buyer.

An Atlanta website, Braves-Nation.com, published an erroneous report, saying, “There’s already been a petition filed within the BBWAA to have his vote removed by one of the members in good standing based on his recent comments, so the good news is that he may have just hung himself.”

Sorry, guys. That’s not happening either. When I saw that report, I took it for the garbage it was. To confirm that, I asked Jack O’Connell, secretary-treasurer of the BBWAA, about it, and he said, “There has been no such petition to my knowledge.”

That news will come as a major disappointment to Casey Stern, a satellite radio hack now said to be working for Turner Sports. Stern asked me to appear on his radio talk show on MLB Network, which he promoted like it was the Super Bowl.

His aim was to make me look bad for my blank ballot, placing it in the context of columns I wrote a couple of years ago about my HOF voting. Apparently troubled by the written word when it is used instead of the spoken word, Stern did not grasp the tongue-in-cheek nature of what he read in the columns.

Nor had he done the homework a competent interviewer does before conducting his interview. Had he done the appropriate homework, or research, Stern would have discovered there was nothing rare or even unusual, about my blank ballot.

Prior to mine, writers had submitted 79 blank ballots, including 68 in 17 years, 43 in an 8-year period and 12 in 2006 alone. Before this year, blank ballots had been submitted in 15 of the previous 20 years. Mine wasn’t even the only one this year. Bill Livingston of the Cleveland Plain Dealer joined me.

I am not making this stuff up. The numbers were provided and confirmed by Jim Gates, the librarian at the Hall of Fame, and the BBWAA’s O’Connell.

Was Stern aware of Livingston? I don’t know, but it seems unlikely. He said nothing on his broadcast about a second blank ballot. Was he aware of any of the blank-ballot data? I wanted to ask him about that and about blank ballots in general: did he research the subject to know how common blank ballots had been, did he know about Livingston’s blank ballot, that sort of thing.

Alas, Stern didn’t want to talk to me now that he was finished firing his misguided questions at me.

“He’s tied up today and he’s taking his family out of town tomorrow for the rest of the week,” Jay Moskowitz, a Turner Sports publicist, told me last Tuesday. “I’m sure he could get back to you Monday.”

That would be too late for this column, I replied. He couldn’t spend a few minutes doing it anytime this week?

“No,” Moskowitz said, “he’s going to be out of town with his family.”

I was not aware that cell phones no longer work out of town, but it was clear that Stern didn’t want to talk to me.

A class guy Stern isn’t. A weasel he is.

Stern and his narrow-minded sycophants don’t believe in diversity of voting. If they believe a player should be in the Hall of Fame, the writers darn well better elect him or face their wrathful reaction. No one, however, has ever received 100 percent of the votes. Ken Griffey Jr. came closest last year, receiving all but three writers’ votes. There was no hue and cry calling for those writers to have their voting privileges to be revoked.

I don’t know why those writers didn’t vote for Griffey, and I don’t care. If they had their reasons, other than personal spite, that’s all that matters.

Contrary to the belief of some people, I did not submit a blank ballot to make a statement. I was not, for example, protesting Bud Selig’s election to the Hall of Fame.

I just have a higher standard than most writers for deciding who should be in the Hall of Fame. An increasing number of writers are voting for the maximum of 10 players, and I don’t understand it. If they are voting to honor them, why dilute the honor by electing other players whose careers were only very good but not great?

I would also like to note that in many instances my “no” was not unlike the “no” of many other writers.

Some examples:

• I voted no on Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines; so did nearly 15 percent of the writers.
• I didn’t vote for Ivan Rodriguez; neither did 24 percent of the other writers.

None of this, of course, would register on Casey Stern and his muddled minions. They are too busy playing an inane version of Edward Albee’s “Get the Guest.”

Stern spent his days tweeting messages exhorting to prepare for what he perceived as a big battle.

“Reminder: Stern vs. Chass 3pm EST…… #HereWeGo”

Nothing Stern said or did surprised me once I realized what his sophomoric game was. What struck me as bizarre were some of the tweeters who joined him in a game of mutual masticulation. Playing the tweet game were Joe Posnanski of MLB.com, Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News and Tyler Kepner of The New York Times, who seems to be more at home tweeting than he is covering baseball for the Times.

WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS OUT OF HIS BACK POCKET

When Tim Raines retired from Major League Baseball after the 2002 season, he had 808 stolen bases, 1,571 runs scored and 2,605 hits. Ten years later the former major league outfielder 808 stolen bases, 1,571 runs scored and 2,605 hits.

In his10-year absence from the game, Raines didn’t get a hit, didn’t steal a base and didn’t score a run. Yet he soared from 24.3 percent of the writers’ vote to 86 percent and snared a seat in the Hall of Fame.

While Raines’ successful journey is a great personal tribute, it raises two serious questions about the writers who sent him to Cooperstown:

• If Raines is a Hall of Famer now, wasn’t he a Hall of Famer in 2008, his first year of eligibility? He has not done anything in retirement to enhance his status as a player.
• Why did the writers ignore Raines’ admitted use of cocaine in the 1980s?

Raines testified at the 1985 drug trial in Pittsburgh that he not only used cocaine but that he also carried it in a vial in his back uniform pocket to be able to use it during games. That usage changed Raines’ style of play. He said he started sliding headfirst because he was afraid if he slid on his backside he would break the vial.

Now cocaine is not steroids. It has never been said that using cocaine can help a player hit home runs. Cocaine, though, is illegal, and its use can be seen as undermining a player’s Hall of Fame chance.

In the Hall’s guidelines to voters, No. 5 states:

“Voting: Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”

In voting, the majority of writers have held suspected steroid use against players. They ignore cocaine where Raines was concerned. Most of them very likely don’t remember or don’t know that story. It is from three decades ago.

In a check of major newspapers, I found the Raines cocaine story only in USA Today. No mention of Raines and cocaine was made in The New York Times, the New York Daily News and the Los Angeles Times.

TRANSPARENCY IN EYE OF BEHOLDER

The Baseball Writers Association of America has passed a rule that beginning with next year’s election all Hall of Fame ballots will be made public. I didn’t attend the meeting where the rule was passed 80-9 so I didn’t vote and I’m not sure how I would have voted.

I might have been swayed by the overwhelming feeling in the room, but I’m not sure why the Hall of Fame election has to be the first and only election I know of in America where the voters have to say whom they voted for.

The writers, in an uncharacteristic move, say they adopted the rule for the sake of transparency. Jayson Stark of ESPN.com wrote a column last week extolling the virtues of transparency.

I have long respected Stark, especially in his Philadelphia Inquirer days, but his column on transparency raised a question in my mind.

In his time with ESPN, Stark has been one of the biggest users of anonymous quotes in the business. I recall one article, though not the subject, in which he quoted 15 or 16 general managers and other baseball executives and identified one or none.

What kind of transparency is that?