Once again, Mark McGwire barely got a Hall of Fame sniff from the Baseball Writers Association of America. He got just 118 votes - light years away from the 405 votes he needed to gain induction. | MLB page

Was this surprising? No, because McGwire's gaudy statistics remain stained by the Steroid Era.

Was this a little sad? You bet, because Big Mac was an exceptional force during his heyday -- providing a greater impact than, say, '09 inductee Jim Rice.

It's a shame that McGwire hasn't faced his Big Issue head on. It's a shame he hasn't sat down and shared his perspective on the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs during his era.

He is one of a handful of guys taking a big hit for the whole industry. And he will keep taking this hit until he comes clean, so to speak, by sitting down for a frank and honest discussion on this topic.

Only then will experts judge his baseball legacy on the merits of his on-field achievements. Only then will BBWAA members seriously consider giving him the sport's highest honor.

I have always regarded McGwire as a marginal Hall candidate. His big statistic, home runs, soared as part of the sport-wide power surge.

He put up freakish numbers in a weird time. Otherwise, McGwire was a fine player, like Rice, who suffered in comparison to some more well-rounded players. Many of his peers played at a high level for a longer period of time.

I viewed him as a near-miss for Cooperstown. That he got a little more than one third of the votes he needed to get his own plaque . . . wow. That is quite an indictment of his public image.

McGwire could do a world of good by becoming the anti-Clemens. By sitting down just one time and answering any and all questions on this matter truthfully, he would burn off the cloud that hovers over his career.

If he abused performance-enhancing drugs, some people will always begrudge him that. Some people demand purity in athletics. Some people are dreamers that way. Mostly they are naïve.

But if McGwire explained himself fully -- discussing his workout regimen, his commitment to excellence, what he knew about these substances at the time, what other ballplayers were commonly doing -- a lot of folks would see him as more of a competitor than as a cheater.

Stuff happened on a broad scale in baseball for a long time. The folks running the sport knew what was going on and just winked at it.

There weren't a few rogue players experimenting with this stuff. A lot of people did a lot of things.

This doesn't excuse the players for crossing the line, but it puts what individuals did in context of a much larger issue.

Gordon Edes of Yahoo! Sports voted for McGwire this time around and explained why:

"Mark McGwire was among the greatest players of his generation, one that will forever be stigmatized as the Steroids Era. But because I consider it unfair to exclude that entire generation from the Hall, I also think it ludicrous to set myself up as judge and jury about which players were tainted and which were innocent.

"We can now reasonably assume that dozens, scores, even hundreds of players were using performance-enhancing substances in that period. Ken Caminiti, one of the first whistle blowers, estimated that half the players were users. The Mitchell Report, while naming just 86 players, does not discourage that assumption. Neither, certainly, do Canseco's tell-alls, even if you have to shower after reading.

"The identity of many of those players will never become known to us. There will be no wholesale rush to the confessionals by athletes who were willing to do whatever it took to keep up with their fellow cheaters, just as an earlier generation kept a lid on the widespread use of 'greenies' (amphetamines) as a way to stay jacked through a long season.

"So, who among us feels confident they can parse the clean from the dirty? Who can determine that one player's accomplishments were the result of old-fashioned skill, hard work and toughness, and another's the product of the right laboratory?"

McGwire could do the sport a lot of good by coming out of the shadows in retirement. Rather than live the rest of his life as the face of cheating, he could become the face for reform.

To do that, he wouldn't have to point fingers at anybody but himself.

Alas, I doubt McGwire will ever take that step. He would rather remain an outcast from the Hall of Fame and watch lesser players take their bow.

That's too bad for him and too bad for Our National Pastime.