CLEVELAND, Ohio - As far as a principled stand goes, it was as short-lived as the week-to-week hopes of a Cleveland Browns' victory.

It was for a good cause, just not good enough to do it again.

It involved the annual Baseball Hall of Fame ballot that goes out to members of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA.)

Confronted with the usual ballot of suspected steroid abusers who were eligible and other players who were never mentioned in connection with the performance-enhancing drugs, I said last year that I had had enough of Major League Baseball's refusal to make any ruling on the steroid era to guide voters.

Voting for the cheaters

Most writers refused to vote for the usual suspects - Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, the whole rogues' gallery.

I spent a couple of years voting for all of them, because the inconvenient truth was that rampant cheating actually did take place, that these players were the best of a corrupt era, and that the head-in-sand approach to a time of widespread corruption solved nothing by ignoring the problem.

The trouble with that, of course, was it crowded out players who were probably clean.

Abstaining

Abstention, I decided, was the way out, but it had to be principled abstention, informing the Hall of Fame why on my ballot I could not vote for anyone.

I felt the same moral purity that I am sure people of dreamy political ideology felt who voted for alternative candidates and thus enabled the Presidential election result of 2016.

The real problem for me came with the announcement of the eligible players for this year's ballot.

The head vs. the heart

Now the debate wasn't so much about the head and the reasonable objection I had to failure to set criteria for the steroid era or even try to define it.

Now it was a matter of the heart.

Now it was a recollection of how happy were the 1990s here when the Cleveland Indians had an All-Star at every position, went to two world Series, dominated their division, and, in the vacuum left by the deserting Cleveland Browns, won back the love of the city.

How in good conscience could I not vote for Omar Vizquel, the best shortstop I ever saw, the winner of a Fort Knox vault full of Gold Gloves, the defensive mainstay of those slugging teams? Vizquel is one of my favorite players in any sport ever.

How were 600-plus home runs by Jim Thome not enough, for all that he traveled the land as a mercenary after saying they would have to tear the Indians shirt off his back?

On the rest of the field, I didn't make a call due to the absence of policy on the steroid era.

Some will call this a "homer" vote.

Some will say I wanted to have it both ways with this ballot.

But the heart of the fan inside me, which we sportswriters try to subordinate to objectivity in service to the great god Journalism, will go where the heart will go.