Elected or not elected for the sixth time, Marvin Miller was going to be the subject of a column this week on this web site.

As you may be aware, I have written about Miller often, most recently only a week ago. That column was leading up to the latest and the sixth opportunity for Miller to be elected to the Hall of Fame. I speculated that he would gain 11 votes from the 16-man committee, which, like last year, would leave him one vote short of election.

I don’t know how many times I can write about Miller falling short, but I was prepared to do it a sixth time if necessary. I was going to do it here.

Miller did lose again, receiving no more than 6 votes from the 16-man electorate (the Hall refused to provide vote totals for anyone who got six or fewer votes). But I am not writing about it here because Jason Stallman, the sports editor of The New York Times, asked me to write about Miller for the Times, which I did.

The column was posted on the Times’ web site Monday evening and was published in the Tuesday edition of the newspaper. The Internet link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/sports/baseball/as-miller-is-kept-out-his-fame-only-grows.html?ref=sports

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The Robinson Cano signing is reminiscent of the Alex Rodriguez scenario after he signed with Texas 13 years ago. Rodriguez, preparing to defect from Seattle as a free agent, had it all figured out. He had made a thorough study of the Rangers’ organization and was confident the Rangers would grow with him into better times, even a championship.

Three last-place finishes into his record $252 million contract, he was begging the Rangers to trade him where he would have a chance to win.

How long will it take Cano, who is defecting to Seattle from New York, to cry to Jay Z, his nouveau agent, “Get me out of here. I liked winning with the Yankees and I want to win again.”

For the answer to that question, we’ll have to wait, but I would bet …

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In the early years of free agency teams played games with their fans. Wanting to show their fans that they were aggressively pursuing free agents, teams let it be known that they were talking to this attractive free agent or that one. There was, of course, no chance that the team would sign the player, but in November and December it sounded good and whetted the fans appetite for baseball, perhaps even inducing a few of them to buy tickets for the coming season.

The practice died out as fans became more sophisticated in their understanding of free agency, but fans and other observers couldn’t be faulted for wondering if the miserable Mets of New York have resurrected the practice.

This observer is among those wonderers. Three recent headlines in the space of two weeks caught my attention and started me wondering:

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