The Hall of Fame isn’t exactly baseball’s most beloved institution these days — not with Don Mattingly kicked to the curb yet again and Jeff Kent somehow getting in before Barry Bonds.

The voting process is a brutal mess. Don’t ask me what the rules are. I gave up long ago.

All I know is that deserving locals like Mattingly and Keith Hernandez can’t get a sniff. Yet Bud Selig, the former commissioner who was in cahoots with owners who sabotaged free agency in the 1980s, is somehow sitting pretty in Cooperstown.

Obviously, the perfect ballot doesn’t exist. That means there’s no shortage of injustices. But one in particular is bothering me.

Yankees legend Andy Pettitte is in his eighth year of eligibility. He has only three left. Time is running out and voters haven’t been generous.

Pettitte pulled down just 27.9% in the most recent election. It’s extremely rare for a candidate under 30% to make it to the required 75% this late in the game.

Pettitte is the game’s premier winner in the post-season: No one has more wins (19) in October. And his 256 career victories are more than some Hall of Famers, including Juan Marichal (243 wins), Jim Bunning (224), and Catfish Hunter (224).

Those skeptical of Pettitte’s credentials point to his career 3.85 ERA, no Cy Young Awards and an admitted connection to PEDs.

It’s that last blemish that’s hurting Pettitte the most. His name appeared on the Mitchell Report in 2007, leading to a confession of experimenting with human growth hormone.

That’s a deal breaker for many writers, especially the ones who stonewalled Bonds and Roger Clemens off the ballot. Alex Rodriguez is currently getting the same treatment.

But I’ve put an asterisk next to Pettitte’s name. He says HGH was meant to heal an elbow injury, not pump up his fastball to triple digits. I believe him.

One of the advantages of covering players year in and year out is learning about their character. I sensed from Day One, for instance, that Rodriguez’s denials about steroids were false.

Rodriguez took legal action against MLB, the Yankees‘ team physician and even his own players’ union. He sued everyone, all the while knowing he was guilty. That’s just pathological.

My intuition about Pettitte is just as strong in the other direction. I buy his explanation about HGH. I’m as cynical as any Jersey guy, but Pettitte is no snake.

Pettitte could strengthen his case by publicly explaining the difference between hormones and steroids, something he’s been reluctant to do.

So I’ll say it for him: Instead of a performance boost, Pettitte was desperate to recover from a torn flexor tendon in his left elbow.

The year was 2004, his first season with the Astros after nine years with the Yankees. Pettitte’s elbow was killing him, but he was worried about letting down his new teammates, not to mention living up to the three-year, $31.5 million contract with the Astros.

The left-hander tried HGH because nothing else worked. Ultimately, that failed, too. Pettitte underwent surgery in August of that year.

He confessed to all of this in 2007, even though MLB had no drug policy before 2005. But Pettitte was burdened by his past. He felt it would have been wrong to lie to investigators.

How do I know this? Because Pettitte and I discussed his mistake many times after he returned to the Yankees in 2007.

Today, like any player on the Cooperstown ballot, Pettitte would like to be elected. But he continues to keep the story to himself, fearful that a public explanation now would look like campaigning.

I tried one more time this week. With less than three weeks left in the voting, I explained to Pettitte that many of the younger baseball writers weren’t in the business 20 years ago. They have no idea that HGH is designed to repair damaged tissue, not turn a ballplayer into a super-human.

But Pettitte politely declined, still worried about perception.

“I still feel that me coming out and starting to talk about that stuff would just be weird,” he wrote in a text. “Especially right now around this time of year.”

I admit that there have been times Pettitte didn’t get my vote. But it’s only because the ballot was downsized from 15 candidates to 10. I’m not the only writer who’s been forced to skip over deserving candidates.

But I will support Pettitte during his final three election cycles. His numbers are good enough for me. His HGH use, in proper context, shouldn’t be a disqualifier.

The good news is Pettitte has picked up momentum. His 27.9% of last year’s balloting was a sizeable leap from 13.5% the year before.

Still, it’s going to be a slog. The only player to make a similar leap was Colorado’s Larry Walker, who was at 21.9% in his seventh year before finally breaking through in Year 10.

If all else fails, Pettitte’s name will eventually end up on a legacy committee’s ballot. But that’s no guarantee of justice, either.

Just ask Mattingly.

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