When I wrote last week that Marvin Miller will be on the Hall of Fame’s veterans’ committee ballot next December for the eighth time, I was not suggesting that I knew that for a fact. The ballot will not be determined until the latter part of next year. Nevertheless, I was expressing my view that the Hall’s historical overview committee will surely put Miller on the 10-person ballot.

The committee will do that for one of two reasons:

* As one of the most significant figures in baseball history, Miller should be in the Hall of Fame.
* The committee will do Hall chairman Jane Clark’s bidding and put him on the ballot so the 16-member management-dominated electorate will reject Miller and enable the owners to have a good laugh and declare, “Yeah, we got him again.”

As a group, the owners shouldn’t have that feeling because only one owner, Jerry Reinsdorf of the Chicago White Sox, is still around since …

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The retired baseball writer thought I was joking. Lee Smith and Harold Baines have been elected to the Hall of Fame, I told him last week.

It was too early – or too late, depending on your view of the calendar – for April Fool’s Day, so no, I wasn’t joking. The newest members of the Hall of Fame were Lee Smith and Harold Baines.

They were elected last Sunday by a 16-person committee appointed by the Hall’s board of directors, Jane Forbes Clark, chairman. It was one of four committees that vote once or twice every five years to stock the Hall with …

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As the George H.W. Bush funeral train stood in front of the Bush library at Texas A&M last Thursday and George W. Bush stood reverently and lovingly waiting for his father’s casket to be removed, I couldn’t help but think, “This man could have been commissioner of Major League Baseball.”

George W. Bush wanted to be commissioner of Major League Baseball, but Bud Selig wouldn’t let him. Selig wouldn’t let him because he wanted to be commissioner himself and he refused to give Bush the nod he was waiting for. Blocked in his genuine desire to succeed Fay Vincent, who had been forced out of office by a gang of misguided owners led by Selig and Jerry Reinsdorf, Bush turned to politics instead. He became governor of Texas and subsequently president of the United States. Thank you, Mr. Selig.

It’s not a new story; it’s an old story, a 25-year-old story. But it’s worth retelling in light of the focus on the Bush family last week …

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