We might want to remember yesterday, January 8, 2014, as a date we will not remember. We can forget that this was the date that everyone left stopped caring about the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Just look at this mess.

From who got in to who did not, from who voted and whom they voted for to who gave their vote away, this has become one of the single dumbest topics in all of sports.

Oh, I used to care – even when my friends who had long since cared were forced to reckon with my soapbox about steroids and Pete Rose and why baseball still mattered.

But this nonsense is stripping away the final remaining people who actually cared.

The last thing most of us want to do is listen to these smug little men take their 15 minutes every year and give superfluous reasons as to why they put Craig Biggio 11th on their ballot.

Or why Greg Maddux – GREG MADDUX (that’s right, all CAPS) – didn’t deserve their vote due to some preposterous unwritten rule that says because Babe Ruth wasn’t a unanimous Hall of Fame choice in 1936, no one can be.

If 11 voters left Ruth off their ballot nearly 80 years ago, then by Zeus, Greg Maddux should be left off dozens more, right? Is this an SNL sketch about Bill Bradsky? What are we doing?

Has any of these voters taken a moment to think about how comical this is? They are taking themselves and this process so serious that it is scaring people away from the topic at all.

There was a time that the debate on what to do with the players who admitted or allegedly used steroids was a decent conversation worth having. Leave them out? Create a separate wing? Change their plaques? And if we ever actually addressed that issue, Rose would have to be allowed in, too.

Now? Well, like a growing legion of baseball fans, I’m of the opinion it just doesn’t matter. We’re so caught up in the minutia; the whole thing comes off as childish as the game’s very nature.

We’re looking at you, writer guy who says he will not vote for anyone from the steroid era, then defined it with beginning and end dates and goofed when admitting you voted for a player within those dates.

Oy.

And we’re glaring at you, indigent, self-righteous hypocrites obsessed with slamming Dan LeBatard for allowing Deadpsin.com readers to vote on his ballot and proclaiming LeBatard unqualified to vote anyway – but left Maddux off your ballot entirely.

Yikes.

Who said these writers are “worthy” of casting a vote, anyway? Because they write the “beat”? Because they “cover” baseball? Thank goodness our American government doesn’t allow the same voting process. Only talk show hosts and political pundits would be allowed to choose the president, based on the fact they “cover” it for media outlets.

That coverage, as outlined in a fantastic piece on Grantland yesterday, including ignoring steroids in baseball, forgetting to cover it like Sammy Sosa forgot the English language during his suspicion period, or just not covering it at all until enough people started covering it they switched sides and picked up a pitchfork and started finally talking about what they’d seen and heard for 15 years.

It’s easy to be honest after the truth has come out.

You cannot pretend these players did not play. You cannot ignore an era. You just have to deal with it. Just like all the collegiate banners brought down, we still know who played and what year they went to the Final Four or won the National Championship. It cannot be erased from our memories. There are pictures and everything!

If this stance of ignoring players from the steroid era because the playing field was unequal, then why did the sportswriter forefathers allow in players prior to African Americans involvement in the league? Was that a level playing field? How about the cleats those guys wore versus today?

But the absolute worst offense is throwing stones inside a house of glass. Baseball is trying to do the impossible: create a perfect center of worship to compare all players from all generations equally.

It cannot be done. It should not be done. And until we can get over that, the process will be as convoluted, unintelligible and comedic as it was during yesterday’s afternoon of shouting.

Major League Baseball ought to just have a voting day where every fan – informed or not, just like the rest of our voting systems – can cast one vote for one player. Top three make the Hall of Fame, with a minimum number of votes or a certain percentage of the vote.

Is that a good idea? Probably not. In fact, I am certain it could be a terrible one, with many flaws and loopholes. But it can be no worse than listening to this nauseating yearly dissertation from sports writers who take themselves far too seriously.

And the worthless exercise where we try to convince them all how flawed their logic is has not made bit of difference. Trying to convince someone with flawed logic is an ironic oxymoron. It is a noble exercise in futility.

So I do not care if someone gave away their Hall of Fame vote to a poll on Deadspin.com any more than I do to listen or read another rationalization on why a handful of guys do not belong in the Hall based on reasons that have nothing to do with numbers and statistics, yet everything to do with morality, honesty and various shades of gray.

Until there is less lack of intelligence in this entire, much broader conversation about the process in general, there is probably going to be fewer and fewer people paying attention and caring to this sideshow.

Kind of like politics, with its sniping, arguing over points of emphasis that are not really points at all, backroom deals, dark corners, suspicion and biased, media driven stories.

Baseball really has become as absurd and obscure as our political system.

And, if you are looking to continue to push that whole America’s game status, well, that’s about as American as you can get these days.