Enough pixels and news ink have been spilled over the Baseball Hall of Fame's decision last week not to induct any living players in its class of 2013, barring players suspected of drug use. I do not wish to add further to the eyestrain or angst this discussion has generated. However, in the fine print of the Hall of Fame's announcement, I noticed an interesting wrinkle—one that might offer the Hall of Fame, Major League Baseball, and its current and former players a way to end this long and troubling chapter in baseball history.

The Hall will honor Lou Gehrig and others this summer. MLB Photos/Getty Images

At this summer's induction ceremony, the Hall will honor Lou Gehrig and 11 other long dead Hall of Famers who never received proper ceremonies. It's a marketing gimmick, to be sure, an attempt to lure fans to Cooperstown for what might otherwise have been a snoozer of a celebration. But it also happens to be the most poetic marketing gimmick I've ever seen—even if the Hall doesn't know it yet.

Why? Because if you believe in justice or karma or bottom-of-the-ninth comebacks, Lou Gehrig just might be the man to lead baseball out of this Kafkaesque mess in which athletes of indisputable talent are not eligible for honors because they may or may not have committed a crime that, technically, wasn't a crime.

Consider: What is it, exactly, that Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and the others allegedly did? Detractors say they added muscle, unnaturally, which gave them an unfair edge over players who didn't.

Now consider Gehrig, baseball's legendary Iron Horse. In 1938, when he was only 35 years old and still at the peak of his game as the captain and first baseman of the New York Yankees, he began losing muscle to a disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, popularly referred to today as Lou Gehrig's Disease. ALS shuts down the nervous system so messages from the brain to the muscles don't get through, and the muscles, like candle wax, melt away from disuse.

Gehrig, according to research I conducted in writing his biography, began showing signs of muscle loss in spring training of 1938. He complained of blisters on his hands, probably because he was squeezing his bat too tight. He stumbled on the basepaths, almost certainly because the small muscles in his feet and lower legs were not sufficiently lifting his toes when he ran. Over the course of the season, he began to sense something was wrong, but he didn't consult a doctor. (Most people with ALS don't see a doctor in the first year.)

He never missed a game and led the Yankees to a World Series that year, but he was disappointed by his statistics, which were far lower than his career averages. He hit .295, with 29 home runs and 114 RBIs. In 2001, Bonds hit .328, with 73 home runs and 137 RBIs. His team finished second in its division. Who had the better year? It's not even close. With the possible exception of Jackie Robinson in 1947, Gehrig accomplished the most astonishing individual performance in the history of the game. He was, literally, a dying man, his muscles weakening by the day, as he led his team to a world championship.

I believe it's no accident that baseball has chosen to honor Gehrig this year. He, more than any player in history, reminds us that even our heroes are human and that greatness derives not from how hard a ball is struck but by how hard the game is played.

Which brings me to my solution, to the way Gehrig can save us from another decade of agonizing Hall of Fame votes. Let Jeff Idelson, the organization's president, use the occasion of Gehrig's enshrinement to announce The Baseball Hall of Fame Fund for Lou Gehrig's Disease. Let Major League Baseball and its players make voluntary, generous contributions. Let baseball's steroid users, past and present, acknowledge that they cheated by adding muscle that wasn't rightfully theirs and let them begin to repent by supporting research to find a cure for the disease that stripped muscle from Gehrig.

Every day in the United States, 15 people are diagnosed with ALS. Scientists don't know what causes it or how to cure it. Let baseball's steroid cheats embrace a search for the cure. Let them join the boards of their local ALS charities and give some of the great wealth their artificial muscles helped them earn. Let the Hall of Fame lead the way.

If they were to take up such a mission, they might begin to atone for their mistakes, and the voters who elect players to the Hall of Fame might begin to think about them more favorably. As a fan, I know I would.

There's my pitch. Step up to the plate, sluggers.

—Jonathan Eig is the author of "Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig" and two other books.

Corrections & Amplifications
Barry Bonds had 137 runs batted in during the 2001 season. An earlier version of this article said he had 177 RBIs.