Roger Goodell can be a hero ... if he wants to ... but he probably won't

It's safe to say Roger Goodell's reputation isn't the greatest.

However, I have an idea for him that will instantly raise his standing among football fans, even here in New England, where he's the devil incarnate if he doesn't rescind Tom Brady's Deflategate suspension yesterday and grovel for forgiveness for daring inconvenience him in any way.

He can ask the Pro Football Hall of Fame to let Sydney Seau speak.

We learned today that no one will be allowed to speak on Junior Seau's behalf during the Hall's induction ceremony, not even his daughter Sydney, who was listed as his presenter. According to the Hall, it's their call, not the NFL's, and it's simply a fairly new policy that deceased honorees get a longer-than-normal highlight video, but no speakers.

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt ... really, let's swallow hard and do it ... and assume there was no pressure at all from the NFL to sweep aside the whole "unpleasantness" of how and why Seau died and that it's just policy.

There's no way they wouldn't let Sydney speak if Goodell asked them to, policy or not.

But we all know that's not very likely.

It's not even as simple as whether Sydney would have called out the NFL about its concussion problem, and the fact that its players are destroying their bodies and their brains. She has said that wasn't her plan.

No, it's that every second spent on Junior Seau is a reminder that he's not there, and why he's not there, no matter the content.

So it's in the interest of both the NFL and the Pro Football Hall of Fame -- which is, after all, an institution that primarily honors the greats of the NFL and therefore has something to lose if the league's reputation is sullied -- to make sure that time is as short as humanly possible.

No cheaters in the Hall, period

First of all, congratulations to Barry Larkin. (And in case anyone is wondering, Brad Radke got two votes, so consider me doubly shocked.)

On the other end of the spectrum, Juan Gonzalez's place on the ballot is no more, and Mark McGwire lost more support, all due to steroids, of course. (Although Rafael Palmeiro's support went up. Apparently lying to Congress about steroids ... possibly ... carries more of a stigma now than it did when Palmeiro did it.) And the worrying is already starting for next year ... Clemens! Sosa! Bonds! Whatever shall we do?

Personally, I'll be most upset if Curt Schilling gets in.

It's understandable that the people who ignored rampant steroid use in baseball for years would want to make sure the Hall of Fame is kept free of cheaters, and I completely support that effort.

So let's start by throwing Whitey Ford out.

Yes, that's right. After all, he cut baseballs and put all sorts of gunk on the ball. How many clean hitters couldn't build their own Hall resumes trying to hit Ford's funky pitches?

And needless to say, Gaylord Perry has to go. After all, he literally wrote the book on cheating.

John McGraw was an old-school cheat. Farewell.

And Don Sutton? The guy who threatened a lawsuit to keep from getting suspended? Take your plaque back; Cooperstown no longer has any use for it.

There can be a special committee to determine all the players who cheated, and a big ceremony during the summer will celebrate their removal from the Hall of Fame and its rebirth as a clean institution.

Anything less, and people more cynical than me might think that the self-proclaimed moral guardians of the game only seem to care about one particular kind of cheating.

Brad Radke won't go to the Hall of Fame, but there's no shame in that

I came across an article on the Baseball Hall of Fame website about how former Minnesota Twins pitcher Brad Radke is on the ballot for the first time this year.

The idea seemed laughable, but I kept reading, and Samantha Carr. who wrote the piece, sold it pretty well: already a member of the Twins' Hall of Fame, the 20 wins in 1997, a mainstay of three playoff teams, including in 2006 with an injured arm, the kind words from teammates.

"It's pretty amazing to watch him make these picture-perfect pitches time after time," said Twins second baseman Chuck Knoblauch. "He's getting some well-deserved recognition for what he's done, especially with the team we have."

For a brief moment, I thought that maybe Radke was one of those guys who did enough in his career that perhaps he had statistics relatively close to someone who had been enshrined or was at least in a conversation about it.

Then I kept reading.

"Finishing his career with 148 wins, a 4.22 ERA, 10 shutouts and 1,467 strikeouts, Radke was one of the most consistent pitchers in the game. When he retired, he ranked fourth in Twins franchise history in strikeouts, third in wins, second in games started and fourth in innings pitched."

Nope, that's not going to get it done. It may not even be enough to stay on the ballot by getting more than 5 percent of the vote. Frankly, it would shock me if he got a single vote.

And in his time, Brad Radke was a really good pitcher. It just goes to show how good someone has to be to even be on the outer fringes of Hall of Fame discussion.

Nothing half-baked about it

One columnist who I should read more often is Jeff Jacobs of the Hartford Courant, but I caught this column about the difficulty of being a Baseball Hall of Fame voter in the age of steroids. Good stuff.

On his decision, so far, not to vote for Jeff Bagwell, who has never been linked with steroids other than by rumor:
"I have wanted to wait a few years to see if anything surfaced. To watch ESPN, Yahoo!, New York Daily News, the Texas media — someone with the resources and vigor — put Bagwell in its headlights and see if he emerges clean. I have no intentions of making him wait forever. I will wait another year or two. If the worst thing I do is to make him enter the Hall of Fame with his teammate Craig Biggio, well, that's damning Bagwell with a great blessing."

(In case you're wondering, "Half-Baked Jake" is what he calls his columns about a series of unrelated items, hence the name of this post.)