For four weeks, the Hall of Fame ballot sat on this balloteer's desk, casting its annual hypnotic spell.

There is no greater honor in this line of work than being asked to fill out that ballot. There is also no more challenging, Pepcid-inducing responsibility in this line of work than having to study that ballot and divide the Hall of Famers from the men who are forced to suffer through one unhappy election day after another, sometimes for 15 years.

Trust me. It isn't as easy as it looks. Not when the lives and reputations of real human beings are riding on those check marks.

After all those weeks of staring at that ballot this winter, I finally voted for eight names. Here's a look at the names I checked -- and those I didn't.

The First-Timers
There were three compelling candidates making their first appearance on the ballot this year -- Ozzie Smith, Andre Dawson and Alan Trammell. I voted for two of them.

1. OZZIE SMITH
When you watched the Wizard play, you knew you were watching something special. And that's almost reason enough to vote for him even if you never looked at a single other fact.

But Ozzie Smith was more than just the Nadia Comeneci of shortstops, more than simply a "This Week in Baseball" highlight waiting to happen.

He didn't merely possess range. He invented range. He once racked up 621 assists in one season (1980). This year, two shortstops in the whole sport came within 140 of that. And Ozzie had seven other seasons of 500 assists or more in him -- most of any shortstop ever.

But while he was running down everything between Joplin and Creve Coeur, he also was catching everything he got to. No shortstop in history led the National League in fielding percentage more times than Smith (seven).

So you could have voted for him based only on his leathercrafting, on those 13 consecutive Gold Gloves. (Only Brooks Robinson and Jim Kaat ever won that many in a row at any position.)

But despite that .262 career batting average, the Wizard found ways to help his teams offensively, too. We're talking about a guy who stole 30 bases or more 11 times. And in the last 25 years, only three players had more 30-steal seasons -- Rickey Henderson (21), Tim Raines (12) and Brett Butler (12).

So this was the easiest vote of the year. If you don't count multi-position candidates Robin Yount and Ernie Banks, only one shortstop -- Honus Wagner -- has ever been a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Uh, make that two.

2. ANDRE DAWSON
Dawson probably won't come within 100 votes of getting elected. But friends, this man was a Hall of Famer.

He won one MVP award and finished second twice. He was a rookie of the year. He won eight Gold Gloves. And for almost a solid decade, you could never debate the identity of the National League's best player without mentioning his name.

In his prime, from 1978 through 1992, he got more extra-base hits than any player in baseball. And he was a consistent presence among the league leaders in a million categories -- homers, RBI, hits, runs, slugging, total bases, etc., etc.

He never quite got to 500 homers or 3,000 hits. But only two players in history have combined for as many home runs (438), hits (2,774) and stolen bases (314) as Dawson -- Willie Mays and Barry Bonds. Pretty good group.

No telling how many bases the Hawk would have stolen if his knee cartilage hadn't turned to linguini, courtesy of the joint-eating AstroConcrete in Montreal. By the time he got to Chicago in 1987, he needed to go through more ice cubes than the Cubby Bear Lounge just to play at all.

Because of the way he carried himself and all the pain he endured to keep himself in the lineup, Andre Dawson commanded as much respect from his peers as any player of his time. So I'll never have a second thought marking his name on any Hall of Fame ballot.

The Last-Timer
Any player who is forced to endure 15 years on this ballot deserves one final long, hard look. Only one man qualified this year. By the time I'd finished looking at him, I'd convinced myself to vote for him. His name:

3. LUIS TIANT
There has never been any question about how great Tiant was at his best. He is one of only four starting pitchers in the last half-century who finished two different seasons with an ERA under 2.00. You've heard of the others: Sandy Koufax (three times), Greg Maddux (twice) and Pedro Martinez (twice).

The issue was the rest of Tiant's career, which included a half-dozen eminently mediocre seasons. But after reviving his career at age 31 in Boston, he had five straight dominating seasons in the '70s (going 96-58). He led his league in shutouts three times. And he was a clear-cut No. 1 starter for a long, long time.

There is a fascinating Bill James stat called "Wins Above Average" that persuaded me to vote for him once and for all.

It measures how many more games a pitcher won than the average pitcher would have won, while pitching for his team in his home ballpark. Over the period from 1964 through 1979, Tiant was plus-35. Only Tom Seaver (43) and Jim Palmer (42) graded out better.

So Luis Tiant got my vote. Now all he needs is 350 more voters to have a change of heart just like mine, and he's in.

The Many-Timers
My only ironclad rule of Hall of Fame voting is this: Once I vote for a candidate once, I vote for him every year. So I dutifully checked the name of these five players again this year:

4. GARY CARTER
There were only two differences between Carter's career and Carlton Fisk's: 1) Fisk's career lasted longer, and 2) Carter's career was better in every other way.

Carter won more Gold Gloves than Fisk (3-1), had more 100-RBI seasons (4-2), had more 20-homer seasons (9-8) and started more All-Star games (8-7). So how Fisk is in the Hall and Carter isn't remains the biggest mystery since Who Shot Kennedy.

5. BRUCE SUTTER AND 6. GOOSE GOSSAGE
No one seems to know what a Hall of Fame closer looks like. But Sutter jumped by 53 votes last year and Gossage took a 62-vote leap. So apparently, other people are starting to think a Hall of Famer looks a lot like these two guys.

Sutter was a man who revolutionized the position, won a Cy Young, practically invented a game-altering pitch (the splitter) and was the only relief pitcher who finished in the top 10 in MVP voting six times in eight years.

The Goose, meanwhile, had a 10-year run of mind-boggling strikeout numbers and microscopic ERAs. And he did it while rolling up more innings in relief than a lot of starters pitch nowadays (more than 130 innings three times).

When these men showed up on the mound, everybody in the stadium knew it was safe to head for the parking lot. That's the ultimate definition of domination. And "dominator" is the ultimate synonym for "Hall of Famer."

7. JACK MORRIS
On one hand, Morris' ERA (3.90) would be the highest of any pitcher in the Hall of Fame. But over on the other hand, we find a classic ace.

There was never any question who would start Opening Day on Jack Morris' teams. There was a reason he started Game 1 in October in three different Octobers. There was a reason that only Morris, Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson have started at least three All-Star games in the last 20 years.

There was a reason Morris was the winningest pitcher of his era by such a vast margin -- by 41 wins, the equivalent of two full seasons worth of wins. (Morris from 1979-92: 233 wins. Runner-up Dave Stieb: 192.)

And there was a reason Tom Kelly allowed Morris to talk him into staying out there to throw 10 shutout innings in maybe the greatest Game 7 pitching performance ever witnessed (Metrodome, 1991).

That reason, at least to this voter, was that Jack Morris, at his finest, was Hall of Fame material.

8. DALE MURPHY
When measured against today's Ruthian numbers, Murphy's 398 homers and .469 career slugging average don't look like any big deal. But when measuring Hall of Famers, the idea is to measure them against their own generation, and only their own generation.

And when you measure Dale Murphy against his generation, all I know is that there sure were a lot of years in the mid-'80s when people thought he might be the best player in the whole sport.

He led the National League in hits and runs scored in the '80s. He tied Mike Schmidt for most RBIs. He won back-to-back MVP trophies and five Gold Gloves. He once ('85) got more All-Star votes than anyone else in the game. And his qualities as a superior human being earn him more character-and-integrity points than any superstar I've ever been around.

Obviously, not enough voters agree for Murphy to get his plaque hung on a wall in Cooperstown. But why he lost more votes last year than any player except Tiant (falling by 23, to just 93 votes) makes less sense to me than John Walker's career path.

The Near-Misses
Drawing that line that separates the Hall of Famers from the close calls is a thankless, agonizing job. But somebody has to do it. For this voter, these were the three toughest calls:

ALAN TRAMMELL
It was Trammell's first year on the ballot. And he was the single reason I put off sending in my ballot for a good week and a half.

As my dot-com buddy Jim Caple points out, Trammell won three more Gold Gloves at short (four) than Robin Yount and made twice as many All-Star teams (six). He played the game exactly how you wanted it played, should have won an MVP award in 1987 and had a few other years where he hung around the league leaders in batting and runs scored.

But the big question was: Was he truly considered a dominating player at his position in his era?

The fact was, that was probably true for only one season ('87) in a 20-year career. Most of those other years, he was just a very, very good player. For this voter, in the end, that wasn't quite enough to earn him a vote. Hopefully, he won't get lopped off the ballot on his first go-round like his partner, Lou Whitaker, so I can get the chance to agonize over him more next year.

JIM RICE
No player has ever caused me more heartburn than Rice, whose 11 years of offensive terror ('75-85) rival anyone's of that era.

But when you look at Rice as a complete player, you find the reasons he has fallen short seven times. He gets no points for speed, defense or off-the-field contributions. He has to be voted on strictly for his offensive credentials. And just when those offensive credentials alone were about to cement his case, his career fell off the edge of the earth (only 31 home runs, 162 RBI after age 34).

So he remains on my not-quite list. But I've never considered that list to be a life sentence.

BERT BLYLEVEN
If this were just about numbers, Blyleven would probably have delivered his Hall of Fame acceptance speech by now. You don't find too many names floating across this ballot with 287 wins, 60 career shutouts or the fourth-highest strikeout total in history (3,701).

But there's a reason Blyleven got just 121 votes last year. And the reason is that, unlike Morris, he was almost never regarded as his team's go-to guy.

In 22 seasons, he made the top three in the Cy Young derby only twice -- but was traded five times. That makes him just good enough to agonize over interminably, but not quite good enough to vote for.

And for those who have never held one of these Hall of Fame ballots in their hand, it is the difficulty in making calls just like that one which make this job the most painful great honor of my profession.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.