The sports world, not just baseball, has always been basically bereft of loyalty. Players, for the most part, have no loyalty to their teams, and their teams show no loyalty to them. That reality has only increased in the era of free agency. Players and teams, for the most part, make business decisions.

There is, however, another kind of loyalty, and that is between clubs and their officials. Last week Andrew Friedman, the Tampa Bay general manager, demonstrated an admirable act of loyalty by shunning the opportunity to go home to Houston, where he was born and grew up, to become the general manager of the Astros.

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Maybe Ron Santo belongs in the Hall of Fame, but I never voted for him in the 15 years he was on the writers’ ballot and neither did most of the voters. The highest percentage of votes the Chicago Cubs’ third baseman received in one year was 43.1 percent in 1998, his last year on the ballot.

In none of the other 14 years he was on the ballot did he receive as much as 40 percent of the vote (election requires 75 percent). Cumulatively, over 15 years he received 26.6 percent of the votes.

But a 16-man committee reviewed his career, very likely considered his poor health that devastated his post-playing life (he died last year of diabetes and assorted resulting ailments a year ago) and elected him.

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The Tal Smith era is over in Houston – for the second time. At the age of 78, Smith is unlikely to return for Tal III.

As far as John McMullen was concerned, there shouldn’t have been a Tal II.

When McMullen bought the Astros in 1979, he inherited Smith as the team’s president and general manager. But only 15 months later McMullen fired Smith, privately citing insubordination and personal indiscretions as the reasons.

When he sold the team to Drayton McLane Jr. late in 1992, McMullen sought and said he obtained McLane’s promise that he wouldn’t hire Smith, but McLane put Smith in charge of the front office two years into his ownership.

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