The words practically leaped off the computer screen:

Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson says Jobe’s work is a testament to the positive role of medicine in baseball’s growth.

That sentence appeared in a news release from the Hall of Fame last week announcing that the Hall will honor Dr. Frank Jobe at its annual induction ceremonies in Cooperstown in July.

In case the name is not familiar to you, nearly 40 years ago Dr. Jobe developed the elbow operation that is commonly known as Tommy John surgery. It should be known as Frank Jobe surgery, but John was Jobe’s first ligament transplant patient. It was an experiment that worked so well hundreds and hundreds of pitchers have had the transplants and have lived not only to tell about it but to resume pitching and extend their careers.

So what does all of this have to do with the Hall of Fame?

Hall officials found themselves in a precarious position when no players were elected to Hall membership this year. Not only that, but the trio elected by the veterans committee won’t be on the Cooperstown stage either. Umpire Hank O’Day, owner Jacob Ruppert and catcher Deacon White can’t make it.

In the interest of avoiding a dead induction ceremony, Hall officials concocted a way of having a live body or two. They haven’t said if the 87-year-old Dr. Jobe will attend, but they have invited 69-year-old John, whose 288 career pitching victories failed to get him elected to the Hall.

This will be the only way John will get to Cooperstown. The 31.7 percent of the vote he received in 2009, his last year of eligibility, was a 15-year high and the only time he reached 30 percent.

The Jobe-created surgery, however, has made the left-hander a household name, well beyond his playing career. But as much as John gets credit for being the first, Jobe deserves recognition for saving and extending all of those careers.

Whatever the Hall’s motivation for honoring Jobe, it’s a good idea. Furthermore, it establishes a precedent, perhaps none Hall officials had in mind but one they can use to correct the most heinous oversight in the Hall’s history. I am talking about Marvin Miller.

From 2003 through 2010, Miller appeared on the ballots of one form of veterans committee or another five times and was rejected five times. He is eligible to appear a sixth time later this year. No candidate has endured the nonsense Miller has.

In the years before he showed up on a ballot, he was said to be ineligible because he didn’t fit anywhere. Even Leonard Koppett, The New York Times sports reporter who was a big booster of Miller, bought that nonsense. At least that’s what Koppett once told me when I asked him why the veterans committee, of which he was a member, didn’t consider Miller.

If Hall officials could dupe Koppett into believing that malarkey, they could bamboozle anybody. And they did.

But along the way Hall officials became disenchanted with the veterans committee because it was doing a poor job, electing players who weren’t Hall worthy. So they made a change, converting the entire Hall membership into the veterans committee.

Twice, in 2003 and 2007, that committee, made up mostly of players, failed to give Miller the 75 percent of their votes that he needed for election. The outcomes were stunning because if the players weren’t going to vote for Miller, who would?

In the first election, Miller received only 35 votes on 79 ballots. In February 2007 his vote total soared to 51 of 81 voters but still 10 votes short of election.

Why didn’t former players, many of whom benefited from Miller’s labor achievements, vote for Miller? One theory: The players who have made the Hall of Fame don’t believe anyone else belongs so they didn’t vote for anyone, including their biggest benefactor.

Officials, however, were dissatisfied with having no one elected so they changed the format, creating a mixed 12-man panel of former players, owners and executives. In December 2007 that committee elected former commissioner Bowie Kuhn with 10 votes but gave Miller only three votes.

Then the Hall changed the voting format yet again. Still facing a 12-man committee, Miller gained seven votes in 2009. He needed nine. In 2010, after a switch to a 16-man committee, Miller came closest yet with 11 votes, missing by only one vote.

All right, so Miller has failed whatever the format. Hall officials would have you believe that they have tried to get Miller elected. But they have succeeded only in having him fail. Enough with the voting already. Adopt the Jobe policy.

Take Idelson’s comment in the news release and substitute a few words: “Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson says Miller’s work is a testament to the positive role of labor in baseball’s growth.”

Can anyone, even owners, argue with that statement? It is no accident that Major League Baseball is enjoying record revenue – more than $8 billion annually – and record earnings.

Contrary to Kuhn’s ignorant and misguided view that free agency and the end of the reserve system would kill baseball, the game has flourished financially and artistically.

No team or teams dominate baseball annually. More teams than ever have a chance to win.

In his 1987 autobiography “Hardball,” Kuhn wrote, “There was no doubt in my mind that the game’s integrity and public confidence were at stake in the potential destruction of the reserve system.”

In his 1991 book, “A Whole Different Ball Game,” Miller recalled how Kuhn, in arguing against free agency, said it “would mean the loss to bankruptcy of the entire American League as well as several teams in the National League.”

Baseball, Miller quoted Kuhn as saying, will never survive “unless we find oil under second base.”

Kuhn’s foresight was as blind as his commissionership was negative. Yet the owners – yes, the owners – put Kuhn in the Hall of Fame and have kept Miller out.

Miller will get another chance to be elected later this year, and maybe now that he is dead he will be elected. The owners, after all, don’t have to fear what Miller might say in an induction speech. But the time for voting Miller into the Hall of Fame has passed.

The Hall, with its decision to honor Jobe, has opened the door for Miller. There’s nothing sacrosanct about having a committee vote Miller into the Hall of Fame; the idea is to correct a grievous mistake and honor a man whose honor is long overdue.

I had planned to speak to Idelson, the Hall president, about the idea, but we kept missing each other by telephone and he is now out of the country.

“I’m sure Jeff would be glad to have a conversation with you about it,” Brad Horn, the Hall’s senior director of communications and education, said Wednesday.

I have presented my part of the conversation here. I eagerly await Jeff’s part.