Absolutely no one was voted into the Hall of Fame today, and that is exactly what needed to happen. I wasn’t sure my former Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) colleagues would deliver a message, but they did, and I’m proud of them.

Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens each failed to get into the Hall on the first ballot. So did Sammy Sosa.The first two put up huge numbers. Sosa hits lots of home runs for several seasons.

The reason they did not get in is obvious, and the BBWAA collectively made a statement that needed airing:

“Those of you intimately associated with performance-enhancing drugs can’t expect the voting members to overlook that cheating and betrayal.”

I have no idea how the membership will vote going forward, but I suspect Bonds eventually will get in. (I have made the case that he did enough to be in the Hall before he turned into a cyborg, along about 1999.)

Clemens? Maybe. He got a few more votes than did Bonds, but his threadbare denials of PED use (while Bonds has gone quiet) may hurt him more in the long run.

Had I been able to vote this year, I would have checked the box for Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and maybe even Alan Trammell, for whom I had voted in the past.

But I respect the voting members who look at those guys and say, “Not quite enough for me.”

(Here is the complete voting.)

Meantime, the 2012 Big Puffed Up Three of Bonds, Clemens and Sosa … the BBWAA needed to do what it did.

The voters reflected the anger of the public, and the writers were right to show that the Steroid Era guys’ destruction of the record book — thanks to the miracle of chemistry — was not something the voting members were going to swallow right off.

I disagree strongly with those who excuse the bad behavior in the Steroid Era and insist it has to be “put into historical context”. I don’t believe everyone cheated and thus it is wrong to reward, at the earliest possible opportunity, those who did — or are assumed to, and for good reason.

Wait till next year, guys. Some of you might make it. Eventually.