Remember when this weekend's baseball lovefest in Cooperstown was supposed to be a threesome? I do. For years, I figured that one-team wonders Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn would be joined in baseball immortality by Mark McGwire, the star of 1998's summer of swing.

Then Big Mac came up very small on Capitol Hill. Now Ripken and Gwynn will spend Sunday afternoon choking back tears and reliving their wonderful careers, and McGwire will be someplace else. At least he won't have to talk about the past.

His colleagues believe McGwire deserves a place on the game's greatest stage. If they voted for the Hall of Fame, McGwire would have been a first-ballot lock. Promising anonymity, I posed this question to 25 established veterans: Would McGwire get your vote for the Hall?

Twenty-three answered yes -- no questions asked -- and one said yes unless undisputed evidence was ever found that McGwire took something more illicit than androstenedione. Only one player -- a future Hall of Famer, by the way -- agreed with the baseball writers' overwhelming turnout against McGwire. His explanation: "Knowing what we do, I don't think there was any other choice than what happened."

Aside from that single dissenter, McGwire earned great respect from his contemporaries. Their support was based on three factors: his slugging, his approach to the game and -- No. 1 -- the belief that people are innocent until proven guilty.

"They're making an example out of him. I may sound naive, but until there's definite proof, I don't like to make assumptions. He's being penalized for something that never should have happened. That hearing was a witch hunt. You can't deny what he did for the game.He really pumped it back up."

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"He was a great ambassador for the game. He's one of the few players who, when he hit in batting practice, everybody stopped what they were doing."

"There's lots of guys in the Hall of Fame who've done something, and he hasn't been caught doing anything."

"I know the passion he had for the game, how hard he worked, what a great teammate he was."

He changed the game like no one since Babe Ruth."

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"I go by what he did on the field, and on the field, he was great."

"He hurt himself at the hearing because he got some bad advice. He poured his heart and soul into the game."

"I know he was iffy at the hearing, but really, there's no evidence. Steroids is all the talk right now, and I think the writers are trying to prove a point. They voted on speculation that he took steroids, and I don't think that is right."

"He was a class act, a Hall of Fame person."

I'm a few years away from the 10 years needed to be eligible to vote. I agree with this last player: "I'd vote for him, but I'm glad I don't have a vote."