June 16 (Bloomberg) -- Steve Wilstein, the reporter who broke the story of Mark McGwire’s drug use, might be in the Baseball Hall of Fame before the 12-time All-Star.

The retired sportswriter was among those nominated for the Hall of Fame’s J.G. Taylor Spink Award, 11 years after noticing the supplement androstenedione in McGwire’s locker and getting him to acknowledge his use of the product, which already had been banned in Olympic sports.

Wilstein confirmed yesterday he was nominated by the Seattle chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and will be up for consideration for the award that recognizes “meritorious contributions to baseball writing.”

Wilstein’s 1998 story on McGwire for the Associated Press drew criticism from fans and media members at a time when the U.S. sports world was captivated by McGwire’s battle with Sammy Sosa to break Roger Maris’s single-season home run record.

“It’s kind of an amazing turnaround to the way writers reacted to my story about McGwire and steroids 11 years ago,” Wilstein said in a telephone interview. “It’s a very gutsy vote by the Northwest chapter to put my name forward.”

Though androstenedione was legal in Major League Baseball at the time, it was already banned in the Olympics and other sports, leading Wilstein to openly question baseball’s doping rules after McGwire admitted using the product.

‘Something Phony in the Game’

“When the story first came out, the reaction was pretty much -- in the fans’ world and baseball world -- of why am I spoiling the fun of the happy season,” Wilstein said. “I had gone out there looking to write a story about the great home-run chase, but I couldn’t ignore the evidence that was in front of me. There was something phony in the game.”

Androstenedione was made illegal with the passage of the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004.

McGwire, a 12-time All-Star, hit 70 home runs in 1998 for the St. Louis Cardinals, breaking the single-season mark of 61 set by the New York Yankees’ Maris in 1961. His race with the Chicago Cubs’ Sosa to break the record helped draw disenchanted fans back to the game after the 1994 players’ strike.

Geoff Baker, a Mariners beat writer for the Seattle Times and the chairman of the writers association’s Seattle chapter, said Wilstein was one of “a select few” baseball writers who did a good job unveiling the issues of doping in baseball over the last decade.

‘Ostracized’

“We hear lots of talk these days about how baseball writers missed the story, and to a large degree some of them did,” Baker said in a telephone interview today. “History will show that he did an excellent job at what he was supposed to do. Unfortunately, for years after that, he was ostracized to a certain degree by people in the game of baseball and by some of the writers who were upset at what he had done.”

Baseball has been roiled by allegations of illegal drug use in recent years. Los Angeles Dodger Manny Ramirez, who ranks 17th on the home-run list with 533, is serving a 50-game ban for violating the sport’s performance-enhancing drug rules, though he denied using steroids.

Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, the highest-paid player in history who’s 12th all-time with 562 home runs, admitted using steroids from 2001 to 2003 while at the Texas Rangers.

Barry Bonds, who scored a record 762 home runs, faces 10 counts of perjury for allegedly lying to a grand jury about taking steroids and one count of obstruction of justice, while Roger Clemens, the winner of a record seven Cy Young Awards as his league’s best pitcher, is under investigation by a federal grand jury in Washington over whether he lied to a congressional panel when he denied using steroids.

McGwire Vote

Despite being eighth all-time on baseball’s career home-run list with 583, McGwire has been rejected for Hall of Fame induction for the past three years. Needing 75 percent of the vote, he was named on just 21.9 percent of the 539 ballots in January.

He has denied using banned performance-enhancing drugs, though he refused under oath in 2005 to answer questions from a congressional committee about steroid use.

Steroids, or synthetic testosterone, allow athletes to recover faster from harder, longer training sessions. By helping the body to retain protein, the drugs allow users to grow more muscle quickly, giving them an athletic advantage.

Side Effects

In addition to causing aggressiveness, steroids can stunt growth in adolescents, cause heart problems, raise cholesterol, lead to stroke and impair reproduction, while prolonged use can damage the liver and kidneys.

Winners of the Spink Award, named for the late Sporting News editor, are not inducted or enshrined in the Hall itself. They are part of an exhibit at the Cooperstown, New York, museum that houses the Hall of Fame.

Those nominated by the 25 chapters of the association will be pared by a selection committee before a final vote of all members at the baseball winter meetings this December in Indianapolis, Wilstein and Baker said. Jack O’Connell, the secretary treasurer of the writers’ group, didn’t immediately return a phone call or e-mail seeking comment.

Wilstein, 60, who left sportswriting after 34 years to work on other media projects, author children’s stories and take up photography, said he hopes his nomination will inspire future journalists.

“The steroid era has stained the game we all loved for a long time,” he said. “This may empower some young writers to criticize the policies in baseball when they believe they are harming the game.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Mason Levinson in New York at mlevinson@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 16, 2009 00:01 EDT