It’s about time again that we travel to the Boneyard where irrelevant thoughts go to die, or at least disappear in a whiff of smoke. My mind races all the time and every so often I need to sweep the debris out or I get overcome with idea-logged brain.

We’ll start with Mark McGwire, the slugger of balls lost over walls who is tainted by the steroid scandal that has dropped a soiled curtain on baseball. McGwire was on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot for the second time and for the second time I skipped over his name. As I said once before, I won’t vote for Mark until this scandal is fully exposed and his name falls on one side or the other of the bad-good equation.

Personally, I believe he took steroids. I remember more than once standing next to him in the visitors clubhouse at the Kingdome and thinking to myself, “Wow, this guy is big.” And when I say big, I mean he was just solid as an ox. A big ox.

I never thought back then about steroids so I never had a clue what made him big, except he was. So was Jose Canseco, who often stood alongside Big Mac while we talked.

McGwire got 128 votes this year, same as he did last year. So he’s safe from being dropped off the ballot (players must get at least 5 percent of the total vote to remain on the ballot) and will appear on it next year. Maybe by then I’ll have a clearer idea of what he did or didn’t do.

The one thing that is different about the McGwire situation than say, Barry Bonds, is that Bonds, in my mind, was a Hall of Fame player before he probably started getting extra help. But I have five years after he retires from baseball until his name will appear on the ballot, so that gives me time to make up my mind on him.

Barry’s problem with me and others is that he was such a jerk for writers. That shouldn’t count when you cast a vote for him, but I’m afraid it does. It counts less with me than others, but it’s still there. If the matter is clearer when his name comes up, I may elect to withhold my vote for him the first time around just to protest in brotherhood with my brethren in the writing business.

One other fact about being a Hall of Fame voter: I told Edgar Martinez after his last game in the 2004 baseball season that I would vote for him once he became eligible. He thanked me for that. I have not changed my mind. Edgar will be on the ballot in 2009 (for induction in 2010) and he will get my vote.

There are still voters who think Martinez does not deserve to be in the Hall because he didn’t play a position for the majority of his career. My thinking is that if he’s on a major league roster, he’s eligible. Baseball – especially the American League – gave birth to the designated hitter and once that was done, anybody who spent most of his career being a DH is eligible. Period. End of story.

As an added bonus, Edgar is the antithesis of Barry. Nice versus jerk.

I’m not a politically correct guy. I tend to say what I think, even if it’s not the correct thing to be said. I’ve toed the line more in my older age than I used to, but I still manage to be more blunt than most at times.

The reason I’m saying this is that I have written with the help of Danny Shedwin, former basketball star at West Bremerton High School, a column on the black-white issue. I was thinking of writing it as part of my Wednesday assignment for the Kitsap Sun. But I thought better of it over time – perhaps moving closer to PC than I normally would – and instead I have posted it on this paper’s Web site (sportspaper.org) with the hope that we can have an open and frank discussion on the issue that continues to divide us.

I’m not amazed anymore how much the media overdoes things. When the Seahawks made the postseason, no stone was left unturned in the pursuit of filling newspaper space or filling the radio and TV airwaves. All of sudden anything else happening on the local sports scene got buried by a ton of Seahawks coverage. It reminds me of Anna Nicole Smith’s death. That was reported on 24-hour news channels 24 hours a day for months.

So how much is too much?

Apparently we in the media have not reached the outer limits yet.

Which brings up this question. If JFK’s assassination had occurred just yesterday instead of Nov. 22, 1963 (when I was in the Wilson Library at Western Washington State College), would the media break the Anna Nicole Smith record and go on for six months or more. And if they did, would they uncover the real killers?

How important is a good point guard? Take the Central Kitsap Cougars. They were 9-0 with junior point Cody Thurmond in the starting lineup. Then they proceeded to lose four of their next five with him on the sidelines with a broken bone in his right wrist.

I wondered how long it would take Clay Bennett to dump the Seattle Storm. I lived in Oklahoma for a couple years in the mid-60s and while I know there has been advancement in the way women athletes are treated in our society, I couldn’t help but think Bennett, a good ol’ boy from Muskogee (see Merle Haggard’s ‘Okie from Muskogee’), probably would not want to take a women’s team to Oklahoma City. And so he didn’t, selling it off for $10 million to a group of die-hard women who I pray turn their venture into a huge success, just to show up the good ol’ boy from Muskogee, if nothing else.

This is just a rumor, not a proven fact, so take this anyway you want. This is the story I heard about the Mark Emmert-Todd Turner-Ty Willingham dance around. And, again, take this with a grain of salt.

After the Huskies lost at Hawaii to end the regular season, Ty Willingham handed in his resignation to Emmert, who flew back to Seattle the next day while the team and Turner stayed behind.

When Willingham told his coaching assistants what he had done, they were aghast. They sat with Willingham for several hours telling him he acted in haste and that it wasn’t in the best interests of the program for him to resign.

Finally, Willingham came around to their thinking. So he went to Turner, told him what he had done and said he had changed his mine and didn’t want to resign. Turner, who supported Willingham wholeheartedly throughout the firestorm that followed him this year, told Ty to write a letter unresigning and that he would take that to Emmert and get things straightened out.

The team flew back the next day and Turner went to see Emmert. He told his boss what had happened and that he had accepted Willingham’s letter of unresignation.

Emmert went ballistic. He immediately fired Turner, but had no choice in accepting Willlingham back in the fold less he faced the wrath of the black community, including people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

If this story is true, and it may not be, then Ty’s tenure is tenuous at best. He better have a winning record next season or he’s toast.

While this is all going on, the big wigs who flower the Husky program with lots of green are withholding their generosity. And in the end, as we all know, money talks.

Have a great month.

You are loved.