Baseball Writers jolt Steroid Committee

Baseball writers vote down a proposal to form a steroid committee during the national meeting of the Baseball Writers' Association of America. The proposal was concerned with forming a committee for developing guidelines to evaluate players from the steroid ear in Hall of Fame voting.

Players required 75 percent of the vote for election and Jim Rice and Rickey Henderson were the only electees for this year.

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Current rules ask voters to consider a player's "record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played." Writers who have been BBWAA members for 10 consecutive years are eligible to vote for the Hall of Fame.

Players need 75 percent of the vote for election, and Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice were the only electees this year.

Mark McGwire, the first test of the steroids era, received 118 votes (21.9 percent) this year, down from the 128 votes he got in each of his first two tries.

In other news, the BBWWA chose three finalists for the Hall of Fame's J.G. Taylor Spink Award for meritorious contributions to baseball writing: Bob Elliott of the Toronto Sun; Joe Giuliotti, a retired writer of the Boston Herald; and Bill Madden of the New York Daily News.

However, baseball players had a big say in the vote count as the proposal was defeated 30-25. The name of winner for the hall of fame voting is expected to be announced in the month of December. The proposal was brought up by Rick Telander, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist, at a Chicago chapter meeting last month.