At the very least, when the totals of this year's baseball Hall of Fame balloting are announced, there will be two new members: Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken. These two deserve to be the first players to appear on 100% of the ballots (well, technically, Babe Ruth deserved to be the first, but that is another story for another day) and will probably come quite close if not reach the mark.
For many people, what comes to mind when they think of Ripken is his consecutive games played streak -- 2,632, the longest in baseball history. As for myself, I think of something larger, his character, class, and discipline. On the September night in 1998 he broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive games played streak, the eyes of the world were upon him. Many players, even Hall of Fame caliber players, would shrink under the pressure and take an 0-4. And who could blame them? But on that night, Ripken was able to maintain the focus he had kept for 2,130 games before that and went 2 for 4 with a homerun. It's a shame we didn't have high-definition television back then to watch his victory lap around Camden Yards.
Of equal character, class, and discipline, Gwynn was baseball's best pure hitter since Ted Williams. He led the league in hitting eight times with a career batting average of .338, the highest by 5 points since Williams retired in 1960 among players with at least 1500 plate appearances. In an era when strikeout rates rose and rose every year in the pursuit of more and more homeruns, Gwynn knew his game -- contact to the opposite field. He amassed 3,141 hits that way, while striking out only 4.7% of the time as the league average approached 20%. And despite his sometimes portly appearance he won five gold gloves in right field and stole 319 bases.
While the two will be elected today, they will not officially be inducted until July, which means six months of talk about Gwynn and Ripken. What could be better for baseball?
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Obviously, I am a man with opinions. Despite that fact, I can't get my head around the Mark McGwire controversy. Is he Hall-worthy? His numbers certainly say so, but it is what he did to arrive at those numbers that leave some doubt. There is little doubt McGwire cheated by using illegal steriods, but how much? And how much did it help him?
At this point in time, I hope McGwire gets elected, but if you were to bring this topic up in five minutes, don't expect the same position.
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