Congrats to the 'Crime Dog'

I'm happy for Fred McGriff. I just wish some other players, like Barry Bonds, had been elected along with him.

Jerry Coli/Dreamstime.com

Fred McGriff is your newest Hall of Famer.

The "Crime Dog" was elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Players Committee, it was announced Sunday. He received votes from all 16 members of the committee.

His election was deserving. He smashed 493 home runs — the same career total as Lou Gehrig — won a ring with Atlanta, and is among a handful of players to lead both leagues in home runs.

Even though the voters got it right with McGriff, a number of other worthy candidates remain on the outside.

Like Barry Bonds.

My book Playing Through the Pain: Ken Caminiti and the Steroids Confession That Changed Baseball Forever is a finalist for the CASEY Award as one of the year’s best baseball books.

Eight players — Albert Belle, Bonds, Roger Clemens, Don Mattingly, McGriff, Dale Murphy, Rafael Palmeiro and Curt Schilling — were up for election.

They were voted on by a panel of hall of famers, executives and media that included Jack Morris, Frank Thomas and Theo Epstein.

Mattingly received votes from eight members. Schilling got seven votes, Murphy got six, and other players got less than four.

The idea that Bonds, the best hitter of our lifetimes, someone whose pre-steroids stats dwarf McGriff’s, got such a miniscule percentage of the vote speaks to the limitations of the system.

Yes, I know, performance-enhancing drugs... but David Ortiz is in the hall of fame already. And a lot of other 1990s players whose drug regimen might not be so well known. It cheapens the hall of fame to have other steroids-connected players elected but not the best steroids-connected player, one who was worthy of enshrinement even before turning to PEDs.

The Hall of Fame is supposed to honor the best players of their eras, not the best mid-range candidates who avoided steroids scrutiny.

It's also disingenuous that Schilling would have his hall of fame candidacy decided by a panel that included Morris, who had a measurably worse career than he did.

I'm happy for McGriff. I just wish some of the others had been elected along with him.