Writer had deep bullpen to help with Hall votes

Confession, they say, is good for the soul, though that implies an admission that what was done was wrong.

For many years a Baseball Hall of Fame ballot was sent here in acknowledgment of the 25 seasons this writer, then a member of the Baseball Writers’ Association, covered the Red Sox. Those ballots would not only be dutifully completed, but what mattered more, it seemed here, was that they were thoughtfully completed, too.

Indeed, they came from a very informed electorate, which is the whole idea, isn’t it?

So when someone in the crowd at the Medway Senior Center asked yesterday’s guest speaker a question regarding enshrinement at Coopertown, it just seemed enough time had passed to let the cat out of the bag.

Those ballots submitted over the years from this address rarely conveyed this writer’s personal judgment, save for the candidacies of certain players, such as Luis Tiant, whom he fervently believed personified what a Hall of Famer ought to be.

Relegating himself to the bench, he would place those ballots in the capable hands of much-admired oldtimers, venerable fans of the Grand Old Game, most of whom had rounded third and were nearing home.

One year his ballot was filled out by a much-loved giant named Minty who’d spent his bachelorhood teaching the game to Little Leaguers. Another year it was completed by Ruth, a widowed, home-bound Vermonter who never missed a game when the Sox were on TV.

Pete, a legendary schoolboy skipper who’s in the Massachusetts Coaches Hall of Fame, filled out a ballot. So did George, revered by generations of players in Plymouth, N.H.

Ray, born right after the Sox won their 1918 pennant, never saw them do it again. He “voted” just before his death in 1992. Carl, who founded a Little League in Manchester, N.H., back in the ’50s and could “talk” the game like few others, filled out his ballot just before dying in 1995.

John completed his while on his deathbed at the Hebrew Rehab in West Roxbury in 1991. Jack, a congenial lawyer who never talked about his time as a World War II Marine in Saipan, always sought a consensus from his retired buddies at Marco Island, then incorporated their opinions in his official submission.

These opinions were the ones that mattered more, it seemed here, because they came from folks who not only knew the game but had spent their lifetimes loving it. Ballots are no longer sent here, but if they were, be assured they’d be handled that way again, unapologetically.