Baseball Voting: Leftover No. 1

OK, it's time to start talking a little baseball. So let's start with something that drives me absolutely up the wall about last year's Hall of Fame voting. It has something to do with Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn.

No, this will not be another complaint about the handful of voters who refuse to place a checkmark next to great players just to make sure that nobody ever goes into the Hall unanimously. I do think that's ridiculous, of course. It's a sports crime that 23 people did NOT vote for Willie Mays and 23 people did NOT vote for Stan Musial. The people who didn't vote for Mays, well, you could probably draw some fairly villanous conclusions about some of them. But Musial? Who on earth didn't like Stan Musial?

ANYWAY, this is not about unanimity. Cal Ripken received 537 out of a possible 545 votes, which is probably about as much as you can expect. If you took the same 545 people and offered them a blatantly obvious statement like "Crime is bad" or "Education is good" or "those Coors commercials featuring NFL press conferences are not funny" - fewer than 537 would concur. (In fact, I just got a letter from a discernibly intelligent woman with impeccable handwriting who insists that those Coors commercials are, in fact, the "perfect source of comedy." This just goes to prove that everything is a matter of opinion. Either that or impeccable handwriting does not always indicate a keen sense of humor).

ANYWAY, Ripken received 537 out 545 votes.
Tony Gwynn received 532 out of 545 votes.

And I have to admit, this has driven me crazy ever since. This means five people voted for Cal Ripken and did not vote for Tony Gwynn. Yes, this is the kind of pointless and illogical stuff that keeps me up at night. Does this make sense to anyone? I don't need to tell you about Gwynn. He won eight batting titles. He won five Gold Gloves. He hit .338 for his career, the highest batting average for any player since Ted Williams. He not only had a higher on-base percentage than Ripken (by almost 50 points) he also had a higher SLUGGING percentage than Ripken. And so on. I've asked 10 people in and around baseball which player (between Ripken and Gwynn) they would vote for if told they could only pick one. Eight said Gwynn.

But again, we're getting away from the point. They both clearly deserved the vote. People who left them both off the ballot, hey, I might disagree with them but I could at least vaguely understand their stance. But there are five sportswriters in America who are not trying to prove some ridiclous point. There are five sportswriters who honestly have drawn their Hall of Fame line right between Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn. There are five sportswriters who said: "Ripken, OK, I'll vote for him, he had the streak and everything. But Tony Gwynn? Hell no! A voter has to have his standards."

This bothers me almost as much as the 20 sportswriters who listed Frank Thomas ahead of Joe Mauer on their American League MVP ballots. Don't get me started on that one.