Hall voters finally fed up with lies

There are a lot of things we Americans tolerate. We pay $6 for a hot dog at the stadium and don't even flinch. We flock to the movies, often when they aren't worth watching for free, much less $8. We have amazing tolerance for annoying people, like Carrot Top and Regis Philbin.

We put up with stupidity, too. Mel Gibson is still making movies, isn't he? We can get over a person making a dumb mistake — Vanessa Williams and those long-ago compromising photos, for example. We even excuse ineptitude. The O.J. prosecution team became TV stars after botching the case of the century.

But it seems we actually do draw a line when it comes to liars and cheaters.

By now you must know the subject today is baseball, because lying and cheating are pretty much synonymous with the Grand Old Game.

At issue this month is the status of former slugger Mark McGwire and whether he belongs in the Hall of Fame. Ballots were mailed this week and it is McGwire's first chance to be elected. But an Associated Press survey of Hall voters indicated that just a fraction of them plan to vote for McGwire.

A man who hit 583 home runs is going to get the thumbs down.

Barry Bonds has to be grateful. Finally someone else is taking the flak.

Under normal conditions, McGwire's induction would be automatic.

He was arguably the game's most popular player, for a time. There was a lot to like. He was a burly, modest, orange-haired guy who cried at the mention of his children. He got heavily involved in helping prevent child abuse.

Meanwhile, he put up unthinkable numbers, including a then-record 70 homers in 1998.

But that was before the congressional committee convened in 2005 and McGwire, his answers as opaque as stone, repeatedly deflected questions on steroid use. He said he wouldn't talk about the past because he was looking ahead. In other words, he was concerned about steroids and their effect on the game and on kids, but not enough to shed any real light. He wanted to talk about a problem without implicating himself. What did he think he was there for, a singalong?

It appears Hall of Fame voters aren't willing to forget that command performance. Of the 125 polled, 74 said they will not vote for McGwire, while just 23 said they will. Others said they are undecided, wouldn't comment or planned to abstain. A player needs 75 percent approval to be inducted.

There's something about suspected liars that bothers us. Richard Nixon made you want to grind your teeth when he was shaking his jowls and saying, "I am not a crook." Bill Clinton's finger-wagging insistence that "I did not have sex with that woman" made him the most despised American president since, well, Richard Nixon.