For that matter, Marvin Miller, the leader of the players’ association who merely forced baseball into an era of unimagined star power and wealth via free agency, was not even under consideration after being rejected six times. The absence of Miller, who died at 95 in 2012, is one of the great scandals of the Hall.

So the classic insider made it, the classic outsider was shunned again, and The Boss remains in his personal limbo.

Selig, retired and vibrant at 82, deserves the Hall, if only because he actually does know and love the game, and has from childhood, when his mother took him from Milwaukee to New York to watch Joe DiMaggio and Jackie Robinson. His Brewers won a pennant in 1982 and later he became commissioner, having one World Series canceled when he locked up with the obdurate Donald Fehr, Miller’s successor at the players’ association. Later Selig did a long, slow waltz with Fehr while a generation bulked up on performance-enhancing drugs. Nobody’s perfect. Still, Selig deserves to be in the Hall for bringing labor peace and prosperity, as does Miller.

For his own reasons, so does Steinbrenner, who in this bombastic age is looking more layered and more cultured all the time. People recall how the tyrant wielded a verbal cat-o’-nine-tails on his minions: One pitcher “spit the bit” in a crucial game; Dave Winfield, a future Hall of Famer, was “Mr. May” because of his October struggles; the vulnerable Billy Martin was jerked around, as were more lovable managers; general managers — grown men — were sometimes forced to stay in their hotel rooms after a loss.

The Boss also bought a landmark franchise with dry rot and took advantage of free agency when Miller and Curt Flood forced the relaxing of baseball’s reserve clause. Steinbrenner won four pennants from 1976 through 1981 and seven more from 1996 through 2009. Happy days were here again. Well, sometimes.