At the end of Bill Conlin’s Rickey Henderson-for-the-HOF endorsement this morning, Sir One Chair finally admits to making a mistake some nine years ago when he decided to leave Nolan Ryan and his seven no-hitters off of his Hall of Fame ballot.

The ostracized member of Daily News Live laments:

I learned a hard lesson in 1999, the year Nolan Ryan fell six votes short of unanimity. Don’t know what the other five guys were thinking and don’t care. But I was making a dumb political statement that had nothing to do with Nolan Ryan. I was trying to make a point that because Don Sutton had missed the magic 75 percent his first three elections with the same number of wins as Ryan in fewer seasons, there was no urgency to elect Ryan on the first ballot, either.

I still get 50 e-mails a year referencing me – quite correctly, I now agree – as the dumb bleep who didn’t vote for Nolan Ryan.

Yep, that was my bad. And that well-intended but seriously misguided “statement” was foremost in my thoughts yesterday morning when I checked Rickey Henderson on a ballot that included holdovers Jim Rice (last chance), Andre Dawson and Bert Blyleven.

It takes a big man to admit your mistakes, Mr. Conlin. And you, sir, are a big man.

Just do us a favor, next time you choose to ignore common sense for some cockamamie agenda, keep it to yourself. Kinda like those other five assholes who didn’t vote for Nolan.

Rickey Henderson: Hall of a player | Daily News

Philadelphia Daily News writer Bill Conlin is at it again. Whatever “it” is.

Every blogger’s favorite columnist was suspended “pending further review” from being a panelist on Comcast SportsNet’s nightly sports gab-fest, Daily News Live. Bill has apparently offended the population of blueberry harvesters in Vineland, NJ (seriously) and the public outrage forced Comcast to suspend Bill from the show.

Here’s Neil Hartman leading-off yesterday’s episode with this emotional, heart-felt statement:

After the jump, check out video of Conlin’s suspendable comments…

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