Baseball Hall of Fame vote poses some intriguing questions

First off, congratulations to new Hall of Fame members Derek Jeter and Larry Walker.

You got the votes, your credentials are in order. Step forward, gentlemen, and receive your haloes! (Derek, we’ll investigate that lone holdout vote later. Larry, we’ll talk about those Coors ‘‘Lite-air’’ Field home runs at another time.)

But the devil — or angel — in these matters is always in the details. And the details of this Hall vote are intriguing.

Let’s start with Jeter.

The great, smooth-as-cream shortstop played with Hall of Fame reliever Mariano Rivera on the Yankees. There you had, for many years, two teammates who eventually would capture all but one Hall vote from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (821 out of 822).

That’s nuts. And your clown hat is ready, you lone holdout.

Then there’s Walker, who had to wait until his 10th and final year on the ballot to somehow surge from 54.6 percent of the vote last year to 76.6 percent now. (Seventy-five percent is needed for Hall entry.)

I mean, I didn’t vote for Walker last year and I didn’t vote for him this year, so I wasn’t part of the reason. I know he played 17 seasons for the Expos, Rockies, and Cardinals and went wild in his 1997 National League MVP season, hitting 49 home runs and leading the league in total bases, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.

But I guess I’m part of the thin-air club, the doubters who think that power numbers are inflated a little too much at mile-high Coors Field.

Still, I have no problem with Walker getting in. My fedora is off to you, bub. I trust my baseball-writer brethren to make wise choices, with or without me.

Plus, it was nice to see a Canadian voted in, simply because it reminds us they do play sports up there besides hockey.

As Walker said, ‘‘As a Canadian, you’re born into this world with a stick in your hands and skates on your feet.’’ That image hurt me when I considered his mother, but his point was clear. As he pointed out, ‘‘Baseball found me.’’

Now here’s where details get interesting.

Because of the magnitude of Walker’s rise up the charts, we can all but declare right-hander Curt Schilling (70 percent) in for next year, which will be his ninth and second-to-last time on the ballot.

It’s odd the way you can idle, dip and stagger ahead for many years on the ballot if you’re not an instant-Hall guy such as, say, Greg Maddux or Ken Griffey Jr. For example, Schilling — whom I always have voted for — got 38.8 percent of the vote in 2013 (his first year of eligibility), then 29.2 percent, 39.2 percent, 52.3 percent, 45 percent, 51.2 percent, 60.9 percent and now 70 percent.

Make sense? No. Ex-players don’t change while they’re retired.

But voters’ minds do change. They get caught up in what only can be called momentum. They get serious when a player is almost off the ballot. They reconsider career numbers.

Which brings us to the ’roid-tainted crew. That would be Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, Manny Ramirez, Sammy Sosa and Jason Giambi, the gang that moves along like a raft of pirates on the salty sea.

They’re all still on the ballot, with various years of eligibility left, and their arcs aren’t the same at all.

Sosa (13.9 percent) is a still a pariah to voters, even with his 609 home runs. The frostiness between him and the Cubs seems to have him doomed.

Giambi, always a marginal candidate (now at 1.5 percent), is finished. But Sheffield is rising fast (from 13.6 percent last year to 30.5 percent this year).

Ramirez, who was busted twice for PEDs, moved up a bit from 22.8 percent to 28.2 percent. It’s not much, but with the way Walker exploded so late, it might be significant.

Then there are the two players with numbers that are simply off the charts, Bonds and Clemens. There was early sentiment never to accept these two devious characters, but now they are looming in the Hall’s doorway at 60.7 percent and 61.0 percent, respectively.

What has happened? I don’t exactly know.

Except it’s obvious some voters are forgiving and forgetting. Me, I’ll never vote for either. It’s a stand I’ve taken. Younger voters will replace me. Do it.

But I wonder how that summertime, green-field Cooperstown ceremony will unfold on the day those two cheaters are introduced to the assembled crowd.

I know I won’t be there.