Now the Hall of Fame can allow Marvin Miller into its hallowed halls.  Baseball owners and executives are safe from Miller, who died Tuesday at the age of 95.

After Hall of Fame committees loaded with current and former management personnel repeatedly rejected Miller, I came to the conclusion they refused him admission not only because he took control of the game away from them but also because they feared what he might say in his induction speech. They would deny that, of course, but those on the committee mostly hated Miller and did not want to hear what he might have had to say.

Not all management people opposed Miller’s election, but most of them on the various committees Miller’s name went before refused to vote for him. One of the most prominent former management members who strongly favored Miller’s election was former commissioner Fay Vincent, but Vincent was never asked to serve on one of the committees.

The committees, in fact, were always stacked against Miller. While there were a few former players on the committees, no union official or former union official was ever given a spot on a committee. David Glass, owner of the Kansas City Royals, never voted for Miller, but Richard Moss and Don Fehr certainly would have. The Hall never invited them to participate.

I reluctantly make this about Miller’s failure to be elected to the Hall because at the time of his death we should be celebrating his life. He was an amazing man who took a host of selfish players and turned them into perhaps the most effective union in labor history.

The strangest supporter Miller had in recent years was Ray Grebey, who was the owners’ chief negotiator during the 1981 players’ strike. Even though Miller wouldn’t even talk to Grebey in the final weeks of those negotiations, Grebey a couple of years ago spoke out publicly in support of Miller’s election to the Hall and tried to recruit others to join him in that effort.

In a most bizarre development Lee MacPhail, who became a surrogate for Grebey in those final weeks died earlier this month, also at the age of 95.

In another coincidence, Miller died in New York as players gathered in the city for the annual executive board meeting of the Major League Baseball Players Association, the organization of which he became executive director at its founding in 1966.

The announcement of Miller’s death came from the union.

“All players – past, present and future – owe a debt of gratitude to Marvin, and his influence transcends baseball,” Michael Weiner, current executive director of the union said in a statement. “Marvin without question, is largely responsible for ushering in the modern era of sports, which has resulted in tremendous benefits to players, owners and fans of all sports.

“It was an honor and a privilege to have known Marvin. The industry has never witnessed a more honorable man, and his passion for helping others and his principled resolve serve as the foundation of the MLBPA to this day. On behalf of all Major Leaguers and MLBPA staff, I extend my heartfelt sympathies to Marvin’s daughter, Susan, son, Peter, their families and Marvin’s many friends and admirers. Marvin was a champion among champions, and his legacy will live on forever.”

In another statement, Donald Fehr, Weiner’s predecessor said “Marvin possessed a combination of integrity, intelligence, eloquence, courage and grace that is simply unmatched in my experience. Without question, Marvin had more positive influence on Major League Baseball than any other person in the last half of the 20th century. It was a rare privilege for me to be able to work for him and with him. All of us who knew him will miss him enormously.”

Circumstances beyond my control prevent me from writing more on Miller’s life and death but I will expand on the subject in my next column.

I will make one more point. At the end Miller, who made one of the two or three greatest impacts on the game, no longer cared about the Hall of Fame. But as baseball’s so-called shrine does it want to continue to be a farce by not electing him even though it would be almost an insult to do it after his death?

From the activity the Toronto Blue Jays have generated this month, you would think their braintrust gathered in a summit meeting after the season and, tired of their perennial also-ran status, plotted the course for a coup d’etat in the American League East.

But that’s not the way it happened, according to general manager Alex Anthopoulos, who nevertheless set out to improve the team. Take the mammoth (12-player) Marlins’ trade, for example.

“It just worked out that way,” Anthopoulos said. “It kind of developed. The idea was to improve the team.”

The Blue Jays, the general manager said, initiated talks with the Marlins by expressing interest in Josh Johnson, a hard-throwing pitcher, who in the past two seasons has been hampered by injury and ineffectiveness but is considered a potential No. 1.

“From there, we expanded it,” Anthopoulos said.

At some point in their discussions, a light went on for the Marlins. Here was a chance to get rid of their three highest-paid players, Johnson, Mark Buehrle and Jose Reyes, and they couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

“It was clear what they had to do,” Anthopoulos said. “Go young.”

It was like a personal insult to Jeffrey Loria, the Marlins’ owner. After 10 years of hoarding his and revenue-sharing clubs’ money, Loria, backed by a new revenue stream from a new ball park, spent lavishly on Reyes, Buehrle and Heath Bell.

The new Marlins showed up for the first 50 games or so, standing half a game from first at the end of May. New park, new players, new name aside, the Marlins won only 40 games the rest of the season, winning their battle for last place against the Mets.

“Need to shake it up a little bit,” Anthopoulos said. “Two clubs in need of making changes.”

The Blue Jays, who once upon a time (1992-93) won consecutive World Series, have finished in fourth place in the American League East each of the last five seasons. Their 73-89 record this year was their worst in that stretch. Changes? The Blue Jays desperately seek them.

Johnson and Buehrle give them a strong established pair of starters. The starters this past season were collectively 10^th in the league with a 4.82 earned run average. The only worse starting corps in the division belonged to the Boston Red Sox, whose last-place finish was largely a result of its’ starters 5.19 e.r.a.

One of the starters who contributed to that poor group performance was traded to Miami in the seven-player package the Marlins received. He is Henderson Alvarez, who in his first full major league season had an 8-14 record and 4.85 e.r.a.

The trade also gave the Blue Jays their middle infield of shortstop Jose Reyes and second baseman Emilio Bonifacio. The Blue Jays, however, weren’t satisfied with only starters. They gave Maicer Izturis $10 million for three years to be their super utility infielder, able to fill in wherever he is needed.

Free agency brought the Blue Jays a starting left fielder, a controversial one at that in Melky Cabrera. This isn’t the Cabrera (Miguel) who was the American League most valuable player. He’s the Cabrera who hit .346 for San Francisco but lost out on the post-season and National League batting title because he was suspended for 50 games for testing positive for use of an illegal performance enhancing drug.

The Blue Jays are gambling a lot of money to find out if Cabrera is the .267 hitter he was in his first five seasons or the .322 hitter he has been the past two seasons, at least a part of which was chemically aided.

Anthopoulos brought in one other free agent, a new manager, John Gibbons. Actually, Gibbons is an old manager. He managed the Blue Jays from Aug. 8, 2004 to June 20, 2010. Gibbons replaced Carlos Tosca and was replaced by Cito Gaston.

Anthopoulos was assistant general manager when Gibbons was fired. J.P. Ricciardi was the general manager.

“He was in the last year of his contract,” recalled Anthopoulos. “There were expectations to win. We had a so-so April and a league-best May but a bad June. The team needed a shakeup. Cito came in and provided a spark.”

John Farrell subsequently replaced Gaston, and now Gibbons has returned, an unusual development unless the manager’s name is Martin and the team is the Yankees.

“I was focused on the roster,” Anthopoulos said, discussing his decision to hire Gibbons. “We won 73 games and it wouldn’t have mattered who the manager was. I wasn’t consumed by it. Last week I thought about him a little more. He came up over the weekend. We had dinner and we talked.”

Does Anthopoulos have any more plans to secure players to bolster the Blue Jays further?

“I always like to get better on the mound,” he said. “We clearly need to pitch better. It starts with the rotation. That was an area we needed to address. We’ll see if we need to tweak some things. We have five starters, and we’re happy with our position players. I’d like to have more bench depth. If something big comes up where we could get better at a core position, we’d look at it.”

Because of the trade with the Marlins and the team’s expenditures – the Blue Jays committed to pay the five players a net of about $158 million – there will be expectations this year. Gibbons will be expected to have the Blue Jays in the division and/or the wild-card race.

Neither of the races will be easy. The Yankees are always there, the Orioles got there this year, the Rays didn’t miss the playoffs by much and the Red Sox have to be taken seriously despite their dreadful 2012 season. Remember, they are free of Bobby Valentine.

“I don’t look at it as competing with the others,” Anthopoulos said. “We just had to get better.”

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AND THE WINNER IS….

First came A.J. Burnett, then John Lackey. Now it’s Ricky Romero.

The 28-year-old Toronto pitcher is the winner of the Sigh Young award as the worst pitcher in the majors this year. Romero won my award in an extremely close competition with Ubaldo Jimenez, Luke Hochevar and Tim Lincecum.

The surprise there is Lincecum, whose 10-15 record and 5.18 earned run average gave him a chance to be the first to win the Cy Young and the Sigh Young awards. The Giants’ not-long ago star won the National League award in 2008 and 2009.

Cleveland’s Jimenez had 17 losses, most in the majors, while Kansas City’s Hochevar lost 16.

Romero was one of eight pitchers who incurred precisely 14 losses, but none of the seven others could match his striking statistics: 5.77 e.r.a.; 9-14 record, 15.56 baserunners per nine innings.

It wasn’t a very good season for a pitcher who in his first three seasons had records of 13-9, 14-9 and 15-11.

A BASEBALL WRITERS’ GIVEAWAY

For the first time, the post-season awards voted by the Baseball Writers Association of America were the stars of television shows this year. Under an agreement reached a year ago with the BBWAA, the Major League Baseball network produced four awards shows and one preview show.

I did not attend the writers meeting last December when they approved the arrangement so I have no first-hand knowledge of the discussion or the reason the BBWAA gave its long-held property away and got nothing in return, as in payment.

I posed that question to Jack O’Connell, the long-time BBWAA secretary-treasurer, who announced the awards live on the shows.

“Any answer to my question about our giving away our awards while MLB network makes many thousands off it?” I asked in a second e-mail.

“The answer is that we did not give away the awards,” O’Connell replied. “They are still ours.”

I will give O’Connell the benefit of doubt and figure he misunderstood my question. My “give away” was not to be taken literally, as in giving the network proprietary control of the awards. But the BBWAA gave away the awards for television profit and got nothing in return.

There was commercial money involved, and the network got it all. Matt Bourne, an M.L.B. public relations vice president, said the network declined to say how much it received for the commercials it aired during the shows.

“We don’t give out that information,” he said. “Our people aren’t comfortable talking about it.”

However, he noted that the BBWAA benefits from the shows because they publicized the awards and raised the BBWAA’s profile.

Two problems there. The awards, especially most valuable player and Cy Young awards, have always been well publicized because they are probably the most popular post-season awards for any sport, with the possible exception of the Heisman trophy.

In addition, the BBWAA doesn’t need to have its profile raised. It is not in business and sells nothing. In fact, its non-profit status might have been the reason the BBWAA sought no payment.

That was one of the reasons cited for rejection several years ago when an independent television production company made a proposal to the organization that included payment.

A person familiar with the sale of television advertising said that a 30-second commercial for the baseball awards shows would sell for $5,000 to $10,000. The m.v.p. show, the last in the series of one-hour shows, had a total commercial time of 14 minutes and 40 seconds, including 2:40 for in-house commercials about the MLB Network and its programs. There were 31 commercials plus 8 house ads.

Using the low estimate, each show would have earned $120,000 for a total of $600,000. Even if the commercials were discounted by 50 percent, the network would have had $300,000 in revenue.

The person familiar with television advertising made another point. “One thing to keep in mind about this,” he said, “is that in the off-season, original, newsworthy programming is hard to come by. So while it’s not a windfall, it’s still content in a content driven business.”

What could the BBWAA have done with the money if it had received any from the network? It could have helped families of writers who died or writers who had lost their jobs in a shrinking and decaying industry. Institute a college scholarship program. Make donations to hurricane or earthquake victims.

The BBWAA wouldn’t have to keep any of the money and ruin its nonprofit stratus. But instead of giving away money, the BBWAA would rather give away its awards.

As commissioner with a salary of $22 million a year, maybe $25 million, Bud Selig is in a better position than I or any Miami Marlins fan to judge the word of the Marlins’ owner, Jeffrey Loria. Why, then, does Selig buy Loria’s malarkey?

When Bowie Kuhn was the commissioner in the 1970s, he didn’t buy Charlie Finley’s word. He thought it was malarkey.

Finley, owner of the Oakland Athletics, sold Vida Blue to the Yankee for $1.5 million and Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox for $1 million each. It was the first year of free agency, and Finley knew he would lose the players at the end of the season.

Rather than have that happen, Finley later explained in his pursuit of a lawsuit against Kuhn, who blocked the deals, he figured he would sell the players for a lot of money and use the proceeds to obtain new players.

Kuhn won the legal fight, the judge ruling that Major League Baseball rules, adopted by the owners, basically gave the commissioner the authority to do whatever he pleased.

Selig alluded to that case when, in approving the 12-player trade between the Marlins and the Toronto Blue Jays, he said, it “does not violate any express rule of Major League Baseball and does not otherwise warrant the exercise of any of my powers to prevent its completion.”

But Selig also said:

“Going forward, I will continue to monitor this situation with the expectation that the Marlins will take into account the sentiments of their fans, who deserve the best efforts and considered judgment of their club. I have received assurances from the ownership of the Marlins that they share these beliefs and are fully committed to build a long-term winning team that their fans can be proud of.”

Why should anyone believe anything the Marlins’ owner says? Loria’s assurances aren’t worth the air he uses in uttering them.

Three years ago he assured the commissioner’s office and the union that he would make proper use of the Marlins’ revenue-sharing receipts. He did briefly, signing Josh Johnson and following up that step last winter by signing, Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle.

Those signings, however, were ephemeral. Those three players, those three highly paid players, were among the five players the Marlins sent to the Blue Jays in exchange for seven young players, mostly minor leaguers.

After careful, exhaustive scrutiny, after consultation with all sorts of officials and baseball operations executives, Selig gave the trade his blessing. I’ll bet he didn’t ask Buehrle or his agent, Jeff Berry, what they thought of the trade.

“Throughout the recruiting process,” Berry said in a statement, “the Marlins made repeated assurances about their long-term commitment to Mark and his family and their long-term commitment to building a winning tradition of Marlins baseball in the new stadium.”

Notice, Mr. Commissioner, that word “assurances.” Loria gave you assurances, too. Will they be worth any more than his assurances to Buehrle?

The agent conceded that Buehrle got a lot of money – $58 million – in his contract, but that’s not the point, Berry added. Baseball, he acknowledged, had already made the pitcher wealthy.

He didn’t mention the tax implications for the free agents who signed to play in Florida, which has no income tax on state residents.

“It seems clear that the free agents who signed with the Marlins have been defrauded economically,” wrote a reader who is a tax expert. “Florida has no state income tax, a feature that makes it attractive to so many professional athletes, e.g., touring golf pros. The free agents (and their agents) who signed with the Marlins undoubtedly factored that feature into their calculations of the Marlins’ offer. They’re in for a shock when they have to start paying Canadian taxes.”

Obviously, Loria is not a man of his word. His word is worthless. Yet Selig bought his word, fell for his assurances. From his statement, Selig appears to have based his approval of the trade on the fairness of it. That was the wrong basis.

It matters not how promising the prospects are that the Marlins received. If all of the experts Selig consulted told him they thought the prospects would someday be the equivalent of the established players the Marlins shipped to the Blue Jays, that’s not good enough.

Considering that they play in Florida, the country’s old-age home, the Marlins most likely have fans who will no longer be around to see those prospects play.

When the Marlins’ fans, old and young, buy tickets for the 2013 season, they need to have some assurance that the players they see on the field will be major league caliber. If they are not, the fans should be able to pay minor league prices for their tickets.

On the other hand, why should they buy tickets at all? Loria sent a message to Marlins fans with his trade. Next season they need to send a message to him by staying home. An empty Marlins Park can do wonders.

The most effective fan message I have seen delivered to a club owner was in 1979. The Mets had won 64 and 66 games the previous two seasons, drawing barely a million fans each season.

If those meager attendances weren’t enough to put the DeRoulet family on notice, the fans applied the coup de grace in 1979. That season’s attendance was 788,905, a record low that remains the record low for a full season. The DeRoulet family sold the Mets that winter.

Marlins fans should have no trouble staying away. Mets fans stayed away because the Mets were just a bad team. The Marlins – and their owner – are beyond bad. They are con men, promising something they don’t deliver. They are better at the bait-and-switch game than their players are with hits and runs.