The Hall of Fame and the Baseball Writers Association of America have an unnatural relationship, and the writers have no interest in ending it. That is the writers’ mistake. They would rather sacrifice their integrity and their independence for what they foolishly see as the prestige of serving as Jane Forbes Clark’s lackeys.

Clark is the chairman of the Hall of Fame. I don’t know how she treats her employees, but with the writers, when she says jump, they ask how high.

The most recent example of this wrong-headed relationship was overshadowed by Sunday’s deserving election of John Schuerholz, president and former general manager of the Atlanta Braves, and the undeserving election of Bud Selig, the former commissioner, who lied (steroids) and cheated (collusion) his way to Cooperstown.

On a post-election call with reporters, Selig had a perfect opportunity to come clean on collusion and the many other things he did wrong in his 22-years in office, but he chose not to be any more forthcoming than he was as commissioner.

A reporter asked him a question that included the word collusion, a word that probably is not in Selig’s vocabulary. That was the name for the owner’ illegal conspiracy against free agents in 1985-86-87.

“(That) was well before my commissionership,” Selig said.

That was probably the closest Selig has ever come to acknowledging collusion, but unfortunately the reporter who asked the question didn’t follow up Selig’s answer by saying, “But you owned a team and presumably participated in it.”

I had planned to ask Selig about collusion and steroids, but the Hall official running the conference call ignored me, presumably thinking it would be safer to keep me silent, based on my questions to Mike Piazza about steroids in a previous conference call.

Eight other names appeared on what the Hall called “Today’s Game Era,” ballot, the first of four categories of candidates. Five of the other eight candidates on this year’s ballot are former players: Harold Baines, Albert Belle, Will Clark, Orel Hershiser and Mark McGwire.

The Hall, obviously not a believer in transparency, did not release vote totals for the candidates who received fewer than five votes. They were the five players, Davey Johnson and George Steinbrenner.

All 16 members of the voting panel voted for Schuerholz, Lou Piniella received seven votes (12 were needed for election) and one member didn’t vote for Selig (if you read the previous column, you might ask if that one was Andre Dawson, but the ballot was secret so I don’t know).

Rather than wonder who the one voter was, I am asking why the five players were on the ballot. All of them had a full and fair shot on the writers’ ballot, and all of them were resoundingly rejected. These percentages show how poorly they fared (a player needs 5 percent of the vote to remain on the ballot the next year up to 10 years, formerly 15):

McGwire’s credentials have long been debated – he was a remarkable power hitter but a one-dimensional hitter – but his vote totals reflected the writers’ view of users of performance-enhancing drugs.

The vote totals also reflect the desire of Clark to give some players a second chance in the event that the writers might have missed the boat on some. She should have listened to her vice chairman, Joe Morgan, the Hall of Fame second baseman, who said at the time this issue was debated, “Maybe the writers got it right.”

That might have been the nicest thing a player ever said about the writers.

However, when the Hall decided it was going to give players a do-over, the writers accepted it instead of being insulted by Clark in her saying, in effect, “Your ballot and your voters don’t do a good enough job.”

That would have been the perfect time for the BBWAA to sever ties with the Hall. It was also around the time that the Hall’s board, at Clark’s command, adopted a rule that anyone who was on the permanently ineligible list was not eligible for the Hall of Fame.

The rule was clearly aimed at Pete Rose, who was the only one on the permanently ineligible list. He was also about to become eligible to be voted on. While I agreed that Rose should not be in the Hall of Fame, I felt the voters, not the Hall, should make that decision. Because Jane Clark didn’t trust us to do the right thing, I felt we should tell her to find a different group of voters.

My proposal at a national writers’ meeting actually had a chance of being passed until a quick-thinking Chicago writer realized what could happen and had my motion tabled in favor of a national mail vote. That vote prevailed because the vast majority of writers were not willing to relinquish their status: “We, and only we, decide who gets into the Hall of Fame.” If only they felt so passionately about their jobs.

Should we care about players getting a second chance? I believe so. McGwire had 10 chances. What do we do now? Put him before another committee whose makeup might be different and allow him to slip through? I think not.

But these unworthy candidates will continue to appear on the Jane Clark memorial ballot, and the saddest part is they will be placed there by the writers, who don’t have the sense to say “enough already” and walk away.