The slope outside the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame has been under water for months. That’s why it is so slippery.

Slugger Mark McGwire garnered about enough votes from Hall of Fame voters to put him right up there with obscure middle relievers and bench coaches form division champs. Meanwhile, Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn were the locks we all thought they would be. McGwire’s problem is steroids and his unwillingness to tell Congress that he was packing muscle and strength the new-fashioned way when he bumped his home run total to 7th all time.

I can understand why a voter would be torn. McGwire, as Gwynn said Tuesday, competed when PED’s were common and somewhat accepted, based on the behavior of those in the game’s front offices and dugouts. In other words, nobody did anything about what we have come to call “cheating.”

Still, does that make it right? I have consistently argued that Pete Rose chose to gamble on baseball and so chose to put a serious kibosh on his candidacy for the Hall. In McGwire’s case (and dozens of others to come), however, the rules seem to have come after the fact, particularly in a sport where “cheating” is legendary if you consider spit balls, stealing signs, etc. Speaking of double standards, the NFL’s Shawn Merriman gets caught with his pants down in Performance Enhancement Park and he’s considered for Defensive Player of the Year. Go figure.

American voters now have to consider whether smoking dope in eighth grade disqualifies a political candidate because we have a generation of potential candidate who come from a time when smoking dope — while illegal — was common.

Now Hall of Fame voters are having to consider a crop of stars who may have dipped a little into the big muscle cupboard when they wore a MLB uniform. That may change and McGwire may eventually get in (it takes 75 percent, he got about 25). Lots of guys wait a long time. Suffice to say that McGwire will be one of those.

It may be a while. The steroid issue is heading in a direction that any connection — real or imagined — will indeed be a stain on a player’s career. In McGwire’s case the 25 percent was not surprising nor out of line with where my conflicted vote might have been — this year. The problem is voters (and I) assume plenty when we determine to know things that have never been proven. (The guy never failed a test.) I have always been a McGwire fan, hence the conflict.