So, the Hall of Fame vote came around, and three players — Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Fran Thomas — made the grade, appearing on 75 percent of all ballots cast. Good for those guys. I would have voted for all three.

But, again, we have the “what about the druggies?” kerfuffle. Which in part led to Dan Le Batard, newspaper columnist and, perhaps more significantly, sports radio talk-show guy, giving his Hall of Fame ballot to the website Deadspin. His excuse? The process is “flawed”, which he apparently just now noticed.

The Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA), which oversees the Hall of Fame vote, was not amused, kicking Le Batard out of the BBWAA for a year and taking away his Hall voting privileges.

I am fine with all of this.

After a decade of voting for the Hall of Fame, I no longer do so because (rightfully) I am not an active member of the BBWAA. Not while in Abu Dhabi. Instead, I am am a “lifetime honorary” member. I am proud of that; I carry the card with me 24/7. Even here in the UAE.

And I believe the organization has acted correctly in this matter.

The heart of the matter is the Steroids Era. We now know that a bunch of guys were taking powerful performance-enhancing drugs from about the mid-1990s into this century. Well, some still are. Witness Ryan Braun, Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez.

Baseball is very much about history and tradition and numbers, and these guys warped all that out of recognition by cheating nature. Was Sammy Sosa a great slugger than Roger Maris? With steroids, he was.

When I was voting, I passed over guys whose numbers might make them Hall-worthy, but whose drug use had been revealed (Mark McGwire) or very strongly suspected (Barry Bonds).

I would continue to do that, were I still voting — with the caveat that I would again look closely at Barry Bonds, who was a very good player before he started juicing; a case can be made that the non-druggie was a Hall of Famer.

There are those who believe the Hall of Fame should be home of all the “best” players, a morality-free world in which numbers are the only truths, and guys who hit 70 home runs in a season when no one had hit more than 61 for baseball’s first century, would go in there with the guys who played on beer and hotdogs, like Babe Ruth.

Turns out, most baseball writers with a ballot feel similarly. None of the most notorious guys, in the balloting, appeared on more than 35.4 percent (Roger Clemens) of the ballots.

Admittedly, this is not a tidy process. By no means are all users identified. The Steroids Era came to light in fits and starts, as noted in this recent Grantland piece.

(The story also notes that players inside the game who were not juicing were part of the expose process. Frank Thomas, when talking about entering the Hall, said he believes drug cheats should not be allowed in the Hall.)

I was a sports journalist throughout the period in question, and I can relate to the history recounted in the Grantland piece. The suspicions we had at those suddenly chiseled guys. The almost certain knowledge something was going on; the inability to “prove” anything because of codes of silence. The discovery of “andro” in McGwire’s locker. Et cetera.

I tend to believe Mike Piazza was a PED user, but his name never appeared in various reports, nor did he confess to it. He may yet make the hall; he just appeared on 62.2 percent of the ballots. So others do not share my concerns.

Two final things about Le Batard’s action.

1. He complains that the system is flawed? Then find a better one. The Academy Awards system is horribly flawed. The electorate skews old and many of them don’t see the movies they vote for.

Every award ever created is not quite fair: Voters bring biases and sloppiness and perhaps even ignorance to the process.

However, I am convinced that baseball writers, overwhelmingly, are deeply proud to be part of the Hall of Fame process, and take it very, very seriously, and give long thought to their decisions.

(And who should vote, instead? Former players, who would choose their friends and punish their enemies? Fans, who would reflect the interests of the teams with the greatest attendance?)

2. Le Batard’s grandstanding would have had a lot more validity if he hadn’t slipped into the cesspool of sports talk almost a decade ago. Giving away your Hall of Fame vote is exactly the sort of thing a radio guy goes. Self-promotion, people talking about you … that’s radio all over.  His quote about liking “a little anarchy inside the cathedral” of sports is telling. Messing with things for the sake of messing with things — and for the attention.

Veteran members of the BBWAA (10 years before you get a ballot) voting for the Hall is not a perfect system.

But people who watched lots and lots of baseball for years and years, and who have a deep sense of the history of the game and want to protect it … well, that’s the best electorate the game is going to find.