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I always though Clete got shortchanged because Robinson played on more World Series bound teams.

Clete Boyer played on five World Series teams (all consecutive: 1960-64); Brooks Robinson played on four World Series teams (three consecutive: 1969-71) during Boyer's major league career. (For the record: Boyer and Robinson have two World Series rings each.) I wouldn't exactly call that shortchanging. The reason Clete Boyer gets left out of the conversation, I repeat, is that he couldn't hit with a garage door.

If you want to talk about Clete Boyer being shortchanged, consider that the only Gold Glove he ever won in his career was in 1969, his third season with the Braves . . . in a season in which Ron Santo was his equal as a defender. The Braves winning the National League West, as opposed to the Cubs missing the National League East, may have cost Santo that Gold Glove, too. (Some Glove voters, perhaps enough, think division titles are about equal to gaudy batting stats for determining Gold Glove awards, and for recent examples Joe Mauer won a Gold Glove he earned with his bat, too.) But there were a small truckload of his Yankee seasons in which Boyer was the better fielding third baseman but Robinson was winning the Gold Gloves (not unworthily; he earned his legend as The Hoover at third, the legend that caused Sparky Anderson to quake, "I'm beginning to see Brooks in my sleep---if I drop this paper plate, he'll pick it up on one hop and throw me out at first") and it probably had to do with the fact that Robinson could hit a good bit and Boyer couldn't hit, period.

Honus Wagner was a great shortstop, too. But he might not have been quite as good with the glove as Ozzie Smith.

Reality check: Who was? Though I'd love to see what Honus Wagner's fielding stats would have been if he'd had the kind of equipment that even Ron Santo or Bill Mazeroski had to work with, never mind The Wiz. Wagner was a better fielder than people credited him with being; I'm convinced it would be more evident if he'd played in Santo's and Mazeroski's time and had better or at least deeper gloves with which to play the position. He might have put up stats that make his fielding ability far more evident to the naked eye.

Which reminds me that I've been hoping the Hall of Fame elections of Ozzie Smith and Bill Mazeroski might have bumped the case for Marty Marion a trifle or three. Marion was no questions asked the best defencive shortstop of the 1940s (hell, he may have been the best defencive player of that era, period) and I'm amazed that there hasn't been a swell of support for him.

Santo was roughly equal [to Schmidt] with the glove. One needs to look at the competition in the league rather than just counting gold gloves. Schmidt was in a class all by himself. Santo had lots of competition.

Mike Schmidt had a little more competition at third base in his time than you might think. Those who didn't mention Graig Nettles to you just didn't see him play, especially in several World Series. George Brett is so easy to remember as a great hitter that it's just as easy to forget he was a terrific defencive third baseman. He wasn't quite Mike Schmidt's equal at the plate or in the field but he was the next best thing and in more ways than one: Schmidt wrings out as the no-questions-asked greatest third baseman ever to play the game and Brett, his absolute contemporary (though Brett was finished as a regular third baseman a couple of years before Schmidt; Brett moved to first base and then DH for the final few years of his career), was the no-questions-asked number two man at the position. It isn't even close. According to Bill James's analysis, here are the top ten, from ten to one:

10. Darrell Evans. (Another contemporary of Schmidt and Brett; his lifetime batting average being below .250, it's difficult to see him for what he was, but he was a borderline great third baseman and one of the best in the business in the field.)
9. Stan Hack. (He gets underrated because he was something a lot of managers wouldn't even think about today for a third baseman: a leadoff hitter.)
8. Paul Molitor. (Hands up to everyone who only remembers his being a DH while forgetting he was an above-average third baseman.)
7. Brooks Robinson.
6. Ron Santo.
5. Home Run Baker.
4. Wade Boggs. (His hitting stats overwhelm any discussion of him, but he was a good fielding third baseman.)
3. Eddie Mathews. (He got there with his bat; he was a very average defencive player at best.)
2. George Brett.
1. Mike Schmidt.

Every one of these men except for Darrell Evans, Stan Hack, and Ron Santo is in the Hall of Fame. Evans won't get there, Hack shouldn't (he was a terrific leadoff man and a good fielder, but he had pretty limited fielding range even though he had a good fielding average, which tells you what he did with what he could reach but not how much he could reach), and it's a crime that Santo isn't.

As for the off-field activities, they can, should and do affect Hall of Fame worthiness. It is the only reason that Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson haven't made it.

Actually, Pete Rose got himself banned from baseball because of things he did off the field (technically) that might have impacted what he'd do on the field. Remember---he finally admitted betting on baseball and betting on his own team. Pete Rose isn't kept out of the Hall of Fame because he's a naughty boy; he's kept out of the Hall of Fame because he broke one of baseball's rules. Shoeless Joe Jackson isn't kept out of the Hall of Fame because he made a grave mistake; he's kept out of the Hall of Fame because, to whatever extent (I'll get to that in a minute), he was part of an active conspiracy to throw a World Series.

The Black Sox's one notorious off-field activity can't be called an off-the-field activity because it had something very directly to do with what they would or wouldn't do in an official major league contest. They may have made the deals and done the money changing in the team hotel, but it tied explicitly to what they were or weren't about to do in a World Series. This wasn't just a bunch of guys playing the horses with the bookies; this was a bunch of guys arranging for payoffs in return for throwing the World Series to a team who's been unfairly dismissed as a lesser team. (And I'll get to that in a minute.)

I'm not unsympathetic to Shoeless Joe Jackson. Everything I've read of the 1919 World Series fix tells me he wasn't even close to being one of the fix's major movers or shakers. (I'm convinced the whole thing began with infielders Chick Gandil and Swede Risberg and that they were the masterminds and enforcers of the White Sox's side of the fix.) He may have been more dumb than dishonest. (Most of the fixers, Gandil and Risberg aside, may have been more dumb than dishonest.)

He made one big mistake---he took the money. Whether for an extremely short time, whether overnight, whether whatever. He took the money. Period dot period. What helps make it a black enough hole is that his World Series performance itself isn't as cut and dried as it seems on paper. Yes, he hit .375 in the Series to lead all hitters . . . but his average in the games the White Sox lost was .286. He drove in six runs . . . but three came in games the White Sox lost. And he did confess his role, whatever it was, in the fix. (As did pitcher Eddie Cicotte, the only other member of the Black Sox who might have been elected to the Hall of Fame but for the 1919 fix. Three of the 1919 Clean Sox---Eddie Collins, Ray Schalk, and Red Faber---were elected to Cooperstown in due course, though there are those who wonder just how on earth Faber got in . . .)

To me, the real crime of the 1919 World Series fix is that it put an unwarranted stain on the 1919 Cincinnati Reds. There's not a shred of evidence to suggest that those Reds couldn't have played up with and even beaten the 1919 White Sox if the World Series had been played straight. The 1919 White Sox were a better hitting club by a comfortable enough margin . . . but the 1919 Reds actually had better pitching (the Reds' team ERA: 2.23; the White Sox': 3.04), and better defence---by a considerable enough margin. I'm convinced that if it had been played completely clean, the 1919 World Series would not have been the given for the White Sox that the mythology often had it, and that it probably would have done to a full nine games or close enough thereto, with the Reds having at least as great a chance to win it as the White Sox.

Our conclusion is the same: Ron Santo is long overdue for the Hall of Fame and it is an indelible stain on that institution that they failed to recognize him while he was still alive.

Actually, it's an indelible stain on the voters who didn't elect him. Just like the election of His Excellency Al-Hashish Field Marshmallow Dr. Barack Obama Dada, COD, RIP, LSMFT, Would-Be Life President of the Republic Formerly Known as the United States, and Chairman of the Organisation of Halfrican Unity, is an indelible stain not on the institutions of the United States (if you don't count a Republican Party that---a few kinks aside---couldn't come up with anything better than John McCain to challenge him) but on the voters who were damn fool enough to elect him in the first place.

I've long advocated that the Hall of Fame voting should not be limited to the Baseball Writers Association of America. I don't believe they should lose the vote but why should it be only them? Why shouldn't more of the men and women who watch the game just as closely have a Hall of Fame vote? Why shouldn't the magazine writers (Roger Angell, for example) have a Hall of Fame vote. Why shouldn't George F. Will have a vote? Why shouldn't the historians such as Charles Alexander have had a vote? Why shouldn't the broadcasters (a former player who's in the broadcast booth and on the Hall of Fame ballot could be recused) have a vote? The umpires? (Once upon a time, the question could also have included, why shouldn't the living Hall of Famers themselves, but it took a long, long time to shake off the stain of the Frankie Frisch-Bill Terry years of the Veterans Committee, when they seemed bent most on getting as many of their New York Giants and St. Louis Cardinals buddies into Cooperstown as they could get away with.)

Until Santo died, I was pretty convinced that the next Veterans Committee---if not this time, then perhaps next time---would have voted to enshrine him. They've done a good job of tightening up the Veterans Committee to the point where I don't see anything happening ever again that gets anywhere near the damage the Committee wreaked in the Frisch-Terry era. I think Santo would have gone in in this decade. I still think he will.

But it would have been a wonderful thing if he could have lived long enough to accept the honour.