By Anthony Rieber

Newsday

OK, I give up. Uncle, uncle.

It’s not that the SI.com report that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003 is a big shock. Nothing about baseball and steroids can be considered a big shock anymore.

What I give up on is the notion that these revelations are ever going to stop. We have the dirty 103 — the other players along with A-Rod who are supposed to have failed tests in 2003. Those names are just sitting on some government clerk’s desktop, just waiting to be discovered by hungry investigative reporters.

I also give up on the notion that baseball writers who vote for the Hall of Fame should continue to play the “who’s clean, who’s dirty?” game. Let’s face it, other than ruining their reputations, and maybe sending one or two of them to jail for perjury, there’s really nothing we can do to Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire or Roger Clemens or A-Rod except deny them a baseball player’s ultimate honor: a plaque in Cooperstown.

I don’t think we should deny them that honor. I think we should let them all in. And if you give me a few minutes, I’ll tell you why.

As a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America since 2004, I am not yet eligible to vote for the Hall of Fame. That doesn’t stop me from filling out a ballot in my head every year, just as I’m sure you do.

I will be eligible to vote for the Hall class of 2014, assuming I don’t have a midlife change of career or the rotten economy doesn’t give me one against my will.

That means players who retired at the end of the 2008 season, such as Jeff Kent, will be first-time eligible on that ballot. Clemens and Bonds, assuming they don’t play again and don’t get into the Hall when they are first eligible in 2013, will be on that ballot, too.

At this point, I plan on voting for Clemens and Bonds. (Not McGwire, because I don’t think he’s a Hall of Famer, anyway, so there’s no steroid debate for me with him.)

And when A-Rod’s name appears on the ballot, whatever year that is, I plan on voting for him, too, even if he breaks down at a news conference next week and admits sticking needles in his tush every year of his career.

Why? It’s simple: We just will never know who did and who didn’t take steroids and HGH during the home-run happy 1990s and 2000s. Heck, we will never know who is and who isn’t taking steroids and HGH today, since there is no test for HGH.

We can guess, and speculate, and wait for the revelations, and weigh the denials and the admissions, and play judge and jury with only a few facts at our disposal.

I double-dog guarantee you that one year, a new Hall of Famer who got away with it will stand up at his induction speech and everyone will celebrate how he did it the clean way, and we will never know the truth. That he wasn’t clean at all.

Here’s what I know: With or without steroids, Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were three of the greatest players in baseball history. They competed at a time when a good number of players opposing them were also using steroids, and they were still by far the best.

Now, if I can only figure out what to do about Pete Rose. Check back with me in 2014 on that one.