Not that Henderson and Rice aren't worthy, but the Hall itself isn't what it used to be.

Sadly, the Baseball Hall of Fame has lost its fastball.

The Hall has become increasingly irrelevant. Five years from now we could be facing this situation: We hail the newest enshrinee, Jeff Kent, while we speculate on the eventual fate of Barry Bonds, who has just been snubbed by the voters for a second straight year.

Will Kent, in his acceptance speech, thank Barry for all those down-the-pipe fastballs served up by pitchers worrying about Bonds?

The Hall o' Fame is fading because the admission standards have become too vague, and because the game has become too dirty.

The main problem is steroids. Now every potential enshrinee must be evaluated to see if he falls into any of these categories:

-- Admitted juicer.

-- Caught red-handed (or red-whatever-ed).

-- Fingered by a random lowlife seeking attention, a lighter sentence and/or a book deal.

-- Must have been juicing because, come on, just look at the guy.

-- Implicated in a vague report that honors all of the above categories.

I heard a local radio talker say he's sure Kent was never a juicer because Kent isn't that kind of guy. This radio talker is being grossly underutilized. With such psychic intuition and character judgment, he should be chief justice of the United States.

I'm not saying Kent did steroids. I'm saying anyone who claims to know what Kent did or didn't do, vis a vis steroids, is spouting like a sheared-off fire hydrant.

Furthermore, why are Henderson and Rice exempt from steroids suspicion? Because they played in the era before steroids were invented? I know pro athletes from the '60s and '70s who 'roided up royally.

A former Mets clubhouse flunkie claims he directly or indirectly supplied steroids to "maybe two, three hundred" ballplayers. So we've got a lot of sorting out to do, and that's ongoing, because there is no reason not to believe that many current big-leaguers are not performance-enhanced with HGH, Viagra or ADD medication.

And it's not just about steroids. The HOF voters now wade in the muddy waters of character judgment. Two random examples: Maury Wills and Steve Garvey.

Wills, nicknamed "The Thief of Bags, Dad," was a huge-impact player who probably took himself out of Hall consideration with his horrible managerial record and his drug abuse. Garvey took PR hits because of petty teammate jealousies and paternity snafus.

The world got too complicated. In '91, Hall voters had no problem welcoming Gaylord Perry to Cooperstown, but what will they say to Roger Clemens in 2015 or '16? Perry cheated in a very direct and meaningful way. Clemens, ditto (my judgment). The only difference was that Perry applied foreign substances to the ball while Clemens shot foreign substances into his fanny.

That's a fine distinction, resulting in one hero with a bronze plaque inside the Hall, and one bum who might wind up selling autographs at a card table at a strip mall in Cooperstown.

Can anything be done to save the Hall?

We could try two fixes:

-- De-limbo-ize Pete Rose. The Rose case should be settled once and for all, and not by the current commissioner, but by some kind of referendum of Hall voters, or fans, or by a selected panel. Make Rose eligible for enshrinement or ban him forever.

-- Give the voters specific instructions to ignore steroids - rumors, convictions, whatever. As long as 'roids are part of the voting equation, nobody gets voted in or blackballed without controversy. The public will have to accept that some HOF enshrinees were steroid-assisted, just as some were segregation-assisted.

Better act fast, because five years from now I'll be able to put together a team of HOF rejects who can compete with any team you pick from inside the hallowed Hall.

And my team will have more pep. They'll shoot one another with Vitamin B-12 and tear your Famers apart.

E-mail Scott Ostler at sostler@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle