Major League Baseball has no more controversial issue than steroids. Even though the performance enhancing drug seems to have waned in its usage, it remains an issue, currently because of Hall of Fame voting. Yes, it’s that time of the baseball year, when eligible writers get to say which former players should be inducted and honored with bronze plaques in Cooperstown.

It’s a ritual from an earlier era, and it’s not about to fade away. Nor is the Hall of Fame or its officials going to change. The Hall is a private business and can do what it wants.

Joe Morgan, the Hall of Fame second baseman, is also the Hall’s vice chairman. He carries a lot of weight in Cooperstown, and that’s why the e-mail letter he sent to voting writers last week has to be viewed seriously.

The letter, nearly 1,100 words long, has to be taken seriously because it is the first time an influential HOF figure has inserted himself in the steroids debate.

Morgan, however, left himself open to question and criticism. While he urged the writers not to vote for steroids cheats, he offered them no help in identifying who the cheats were. Writers might often be in the clubhouse, but players who use steroids do not inject themselves in full view of writers. They might not openly act in front of other players, but other players are more likely to observe steroids sticks than writers are.

Morgan might not want to unmask users, but if he wants us to do it, he has to participate. Give me half a dozen names. They would make for a good column for my readers. On the other hand, if you don’t want to assist in the cleanup of the clubhouse, I have other things to do.

I will cite some examples of writers’ observations.

I didn’t know much about steroids, but one thing I knew was what a doctor told me. An acne-covered back, he told me, was often a tell-tale sign of steroids use. Apparently no one cautioned Piazza about that because he walked around the clubhouse without a shirt. His acne was obvious for everyone to see.

His many supporters were outraged that I should accuse their hero of using steroids and turned back acne into a joke. It wasn’t funny, though, when M.L.B. began testing for steroids, Piazza stopped using and his back magically cleared up like a baby’s bottom.

Piazza, however, got away with his ruse and was elected to the Hall of Fame. So the next steroids cheat who is elected will not be the first.

Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio and Ivan Rodriguez are next in line.

None of these four players tested positive for steroids or any other performance-enhancing substance. This is where the issue becomes complicated.

If we convict Piazza, Rodriguez, Bagwell and Biggio on circumstantial evidence, how far do we go along that line? I would guess if we asked Morgan and he were candid, his answer would be we have to go as far as we can.

Morgan, however, isn’t willing to go far at all, not if he would be the one identifying the guilty. From the day I received his letter, I must have called him a dozen or more times on three different telephone lines. If I recall correctly, Morgan’s voice was on each call.

But just like Jane Clark, the Hall’s chairman, and Jeff Idelson, the president, Morgan apparently didn’t care enough about the issue he raised, to talk to a reporter about it. Raise the issue and drop it in the writers’ laps. That way, if nothing comes of it, the HOF can blame the bad guys, the writers.

But I have a better idea, one I am recycling from 25 years ago. The Baseball Writers Association should sever its ties with the Hall and stop voting.

In 1991, when Pete Rose became eligible for the Hall, its board of directors changed the rules of eligibility. From there on, anyone on Major League Baseball’s permanently ineligible list would not be eligible for the Hall of Fame.

Ed Stack, the Hall’s president at the time, said the change had nothing to do with Rose, but, of course, it had everything to do with Rose.

That act bothered me. It’s not that I wanted to vote for Rose for the Hall of Fame; I never would have. I believed he had forfeited his right to be elected. The more recent revelations about his sexual relationship with a minor in the 1970s only reinforced that belief.

I didn’t care for the way the Hall’s directors handled the matter. They didn’t trust the writers to do the right thing so they took the vote away from us.

Their action demonstrated to me that the writers really had no say in the system and shouldn’t be a part of it. I made a motion to that effect at a BBWAA meeting, and I was surprised to find that it had a chance to pass. A Chicago writer, Dave Nightengale, sensed the same possibility and moved to have the motion tabled so that it could be submitted to a mail vote of the entire membership.

Once he did that, I knew my motion had no chance. It lost handily, and the writers have continued voting, thanks to Nightengale’s sharp, quick thinking.

HOF officials recently rejected two proposals from the BBWAA – first, to publicly release all ballots including the name of the voter to provide transparency in the process; second, to expand to at least 12 the number of players for whom a voter could vote.

I plan to resubmit my proposal to cease voting for the Hall at next month’s BBWAA meeting. If the writers can be honest with themselves and look beyond the “honor” of being a voter, the proposal could pass. If it is successful HOF officials would not be able to reject it.

One writer, Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports, wrote last week that he would no longer vote in the Hall of Fame elections. I think his is an admirable position, though I don’t agree with his reasons. Passan said he would no longer vote because of Morgan’s letter.

We need more Jeff Passans, more writers who are willing to give up the prestige of voting for the Hall of Fame and join me in finding fault with Jane Clark. There could be a lot more developments to uncover at 25 Main Street in Cooperstown, N.Y.

I did finally receive a response from Morgan:

“Thanks for the email. I am not doing interviews at this time. I want people to read the letter a few times so they will understand all parts of the letter.”

I thought I understood the letter after reading it once. Maybe I’ll go back and read it a couple more times to make sure. If anyone wants to read the entire letter, let me know and I’ll run it next week.

When the Yankees fired Joe Girardi as their manager last month after a decade in the job, General Manager Brian Cashman said it was a matter of his ability to communicate and connect with his team’s young players. In other words, Cashman was saying, Girardi had difficulty dealing with young players.

Joe Girardi Didn’t Sufficiently Connect With Yankees Players, read one headline.

A similar idea was suggested to me recently in a different way. When I told a Yankees executive recently that I thought the wrong person was fired, that the Yankees would have been better off firing Cashman, 20 years the general manager, the executive said, “You haven’t been in the clubhouse.”

He was right, but the idea that there was a communication/connection problem between Girardi and the young players was puzzling.

The Yankees had not been expected to be a playoff contender, but they were that and more. They challenged the Red Sox for the American League East title and finished the regular season only two games shy of Boston.

Once they got that far, they went farther. They won the wild-card game, they won the division series, they won three of the first six games of the league championship series. They fell only one game short of the World Series. Will a manager who will supposedly have better communications and connections with the young players do better?

As it turns out, though, it apparently wouldn’t have mattered what the Yankees did in Game 7 of the A.L. championship series or in the World Series itself. Hal Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ managing partner and son of George himself, was quoted last week at the general managers meeting in Orlando, Fla., as saying no matter what might have happened in the World Series, even if the Yankees had been in it and won it, Girardi would have been fired.

That is the most stunning statement I have ever heard or read coming from a Steinbrenner, and I’m only sorry I learned of it too late to confirm it. But that’s what the man supposedly said, the man who has operated 180 degrees from his father when it comes to firing people.

But back to Girardi and young players. Young players named Judge, Sanchez and Severino were instrumental in the in the Yankees’ success. Would they have been more instrumental under a manager more to Cashman’s liking? How about more to the young players’ liking?

On the day last week that he won the American League rookie of the year award, I asked Judge this question when he was on a conference call with baseball writers:

Since the Yankees manager was fired, it has been suggested that he did not have a good relationship with the young players, and that’s the reason, if not one of the reasons that the Yankees are making a change. Could you comment on your experience with him?

“Yeah, I had a great relationship with Joe,” Judge said. “He was my first manager in the big leagues. He stuck with me through the good times and the bad times; and he always had my back, always staying positive with me, so I felt like I had a great relationship with him. We communicated well, and my goal is to go out there and play so I just basically focus on that, and that’s what I’m going to focus on next year as well so I’m excited to see who we get, but I’ve got a lot of respect and love for Joe, and what he did for me in my first year.”

I suspect something else is in play here. I suspect that Cashman is among general managers who want to take greater control of developments on the field, in many cases hiring younger or less experienced managers who will be easier to dictate to.

This move by general managers into clubhouses and dugouts is an outgrowth of the burst of advanced metrics into the game, Managers will still take the lineup cards to home plate before games and the lineup cards will be in the managers’ handwriting, but the thinking that goes into the lineups will come from the general managers and their analytics staffs.

BAM BAM MIGHT BE THE MAN

As a major leaguer, Hensley Meulens was a .220 hitter. As an interviewee for a major league managing job, he is in position to hit .000 or .500.

He went 0-for-1 about a month ago when he interviewed for the Detroit managing job but didn’t get it. Now he awaits word of the outcome of his second interview, that one with the Yankees Nov. 16.

The Yankees have interviewed three other candidates and are expected to talk with a few more. Those who have interviewed besides Meulens are Rob Thomson, the Yankees’ bench coach; Eric Wedge, a former major league manager, and Aaron Boone, a former major leaguer and now a television analyst.

Meulens was the Giants’ hitting coach the last eight seasons and is scheduled to be the bench coach this year.

MVP MEANS WHAT?

Unlike many, if not most, other years, the post-season awards have not caused a ruckus. However, one award bothered me because too many voters continued to treat most valuable player as if it were best player. I don’t know why voters find it difficult to differentiate between the two. The best player is the one with the best statistics – highest batting average, most runs batted in, most home runs or some combination thereof. That player is easier to select because the decision is usually based on numbers.

Most valuable requires some thinking and lots of consideration, weighing Player X’s value to his team against Player Y’s value to his team. If a voter treats his decision in this way, he will most likely wind up voting for a player who was in a pennant race, not one whose team finished in last place.

A player doesn’t have to be on a playoff team, but he has to make some contribution to his team that enables it to achieve some status it otherwise would not have.

Using that guideline, was Giancarlo Stanton the National League m.v.p.? The Marlins finished in second place but a distant second, 20 games from first and with a losing record and two fewer wins than the year before. Paul Goldschmidt of second-place Arizona would have been my choice.

On Stanton’s conference call with the writers, I asked him this question:

People have different views of what an MVP should be. Some people look at him as the best player, others look for the player without whom its team could not have done what it did during the season. I just wonder where you think you might fit into those two views and how you view it.

“I think that it’s a lot of factors, but at the same time, whether your team is in the playoff race or not, that it’s the same starters, the starters set up the same way, maybe the back-end is different, but it’s the same pitching. You’re going to face guys that are in the race that need to win so it just depends how your flow helps the team. If your team’s pretty good and you make them a better team, or if your team is already great and you just add into the flow. It’s a big dynamic, and it’s a lot of things to go over to determine that.”

The news comes to you in two parts this week – old news and new news. The old news is old news because by now you most likely know about it. However, before I present the new news I have to make sure you are aware of the old news.

As expected, the Hall has put Marvin Miller on this year’s “Modern Baseball Era” ballot despite Miller’s 2008 request not to have his name on any more ballots. The Hall’s position: first you reject him, then you ignore him.

The Hall, however, knows how its rejection of Miller has shamed it and feels it has to shake off that shame. How to do that before any more time passes? That’s where the new news comes in.

A study of the nine players who share the ballot with Miller leads me to suspect the Hall is rigging the election. Rather than take the chance with the Hall-appointed 16-member electorate, the Hall has stacked the ballot with players no voters would elect.

The Hall, as expected, denied performing any funny tricks. “The ballot construction was strictly the decision of the Historical Overview Committee,” Jon Shestakofsky, the communications director, said in an e-mail.

However, I am not saying Hall officials actually drew up the ballot, but they could easily have told the committee what to look for and the committee came up with the names.

Hall officials would never admit to such a scheme, and the 11 members of the historical overview committee, which is appointed by the Baseball Writers Association, would not confess to conspiring with the Hall because if committee members talk to writers they are booted off the committee.

That’s what happened to two writers in 2013 when I quoted two people about Bud Selig’s omission from the ballot, and Jeff Idelson, the Hall’s one-time-good-guy president, ignorantly thought he knew who they were but didn’t but fired them nevertheless.

But back to the alleged ballot-rigging scheme.

Not only has the Hall of Fame ignored Miller’s 2008 request that after three snubs he no longer be placed on a Hall of Fame ballot, the Hall has virtually assured Miller’s election next month. How could that happen?

The 10-man ballot, devised by the historical overview committee contains Miller and nine former players. Yet another committee, comprised of 16 Hall-appointed members – writers, historians, club owners and executives – will meet at baseball’s winter meetings in Florida Dec. 10 and vote on the candidates. Any candidate receiving 12 or more votes will gain election.

Unlike four years ago when three managers were elected unanimously and other candidates, including Miller, received no more than six votes, the weak ballot will not present a problem for Miller. Jack Morris and Steve Garvey may receive support, but they do not clutter the ballot as Bobby Cox, Tony La Russa and Joe Torre did four years ago.

There are critics – there will always be critics – who don’t agree, but I think the writers have done a pretty good job in their annual voting. Joe Morgan, the Hall of Fame second baseman and HOF vice chairman, made that observation several years ago in response to criticism of the writers’ voting.

Let’s look at the nine players who occupy the ballot with Miller. First, though, let me say that any player on a ballot with Miller is an insult to Miller. In my view and in the view of many, if not most observers, the only people who belong on Miller’s level in terms of their impact on Major League Baseball are Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey. I might add Walter O’Malley, who opened the western half of the United States to Major League Baseball.

The players on the ballot: Steve Garvey, Tommy John, Don Mattingly, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker, Ted Simmons, Luis Tiant, and Alan Trammell.

They were all good players but not, in my opinion and the opinions of hundreds of other writers, great players, elite players who should be in the Hall of Fame. Each appeared on 15 years of writers’ ballots, but none won election. Morris was the only one who approached election.

Collect them on a ballot, and Miller would be by far the brightest light. How could anyone not vote for Miller unless you didn’t want to elect anyone? The writers clearly showed just about all of them were unworthy of election.

Start with Simmons, a good guy but far from HOF worthy. Simmons didn’t receive enough votes in his first year on the ballot to make it to a second year. He received 17 votes, only 3.7 percent of the 456 votes cast. Election required 342 votes. Simmons was only 325 votes short.

Trammell received fewer than 100 votes in each of his first eight years on the ballot. He exceeded 200 votes only once.

Tiant gained 132 votes his first year and didn’t reach 90 again, mostly staying in the 32-to-64 range.

Parker had 116 and 104 votes in two of his first four years but didn’t have four consecutive years over 80 until his last four years, reaching a high of 89 his last year.

Murphy reached 100 only twice, receiving 116 his second year and 106 his last, remaining under 80 for 10 straight years in between.

Mattingly had 145 votes his first year, didn’t reach 100 the next 10 years and fell to 47 and 50 his last two years.

John exceeded 100 votes a dozen times, but his highest total was 171, and he reached that number only his last year. It was only 31.7 percent of the total votes.

Garvey was in the 150-196 range his first nine years, but he fell below 150 in each of his last six years, dropping to 115 in his last year on the ballot for a 21.1 percentage.

Then there was Morris, whom I voted for every year he appeared on the ballot once I left the New York Times in 2008 and was able to resume voting.

Morris was a slow starter on the ballot, failing to exceed 200 votes until his seventh year and 300 until his 12^th. In his last four years his vote totals were 311, 382, 385 and 351.

His 385 votes in 2013, his next-to-last year on the writers’ ballot, gave him his best percentage, 67.7, but he still fell short. But that strong finish should carry over to the “modern baseball era” voting, which is a good sign for Morris and his supporters.

At the same time, it should not in any way block Miller’s election. The only shortcoming to a Miller election is he didn’t want to be elected, certainly not in 2017, five years after he died.

Peter Miller, Marvin’s son, has said if his father is elected, he will honor his father’s wishes and instructions and not acknowledge or recognize the decades-overdue honor (my term, not Peter’s). His plan is to have no one appear at the induction to accept the honor and speak on Miller’s behalf.

I’m torn over what I think should happen. I believe Miller should be recognized for his impact on Major League Baseball, though that recognition would be a couple of decades late.

I remember a conversation I had a couple of decades ago with Leonard Koppett, a Times colleague, a fellow baseball writer and as fervent an admirer of Miller as I am. Koppett was a member of the HOF veterans committee, the forerunner of the Hall’s current committees, and I asked him why the veterans committee had never acted to elect Miller to the Hall of Fame.

His answer was very disappointing. Miller, Koppett said, didn’t fit into any category the committee voted on and therefore could not be discussed or considered. It was the most disappointing comment I had ever heard from Koppett.

But if Koppett wasn’t willing to fight for Miller’s election no one would take up the fight.

Now Miller appears to be on the verge of election. Of course, there’s always the chance the management representatives among the electorate could vote as a bloc and assuming there will be four of them they would need only one other voter to block Miller’s entry.

I would think, though, if Hall officials went so far to allegedly rig the ballot, they would make sure Miller would be elected, though I can hear Jeff Idelson, the HOF president, saying, “Hey, we rigged the ballot. What else do you want us to do?”

WHERE IS THE BUD BOOK?

Long before Bud Selig retired as commissioner in January 2015, he talked openly about writing a book. It would be a natural step for a two-decade commissioner to take. However, it has been near three years, and no book has been sighted. No book, in fact, I have learned, has been written.

“I think I have written one chapter in 11 months,” Richard Justice, an MLB.com writer, told me Saturday.

Justice is supposedly writing the book with Selig. But Charles Steinberg also is said to be working on it.

Originally a dentist, Steinberg has been a long-time associate of Larry Lucchino, who is retired after operating the Orioles, the Padres and most recently the Red Sox.

I was unsuccessful in my attempts to reach Steinberg. His cell phone mail box was constantly full and was not accepting messages.

However, two people familiar with Selig’s literary effort said Steinberg travels to Milwaukee three days a week. “I don’t know why,” one of them said. “He’s been doing it for three years.”

Justice said they do not have a publisher.

“If there was a book out a year from today, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Justice said. “But if there wasn’t a book out a year from now I wouldn’t be surprised.”