The results are in. Players were ranked 1 to 10, with 1 being the most admired, 10 the least admired. Scoring was using a Borda count (similar to MVP voting); players ranked 1 get 10 points, players ranked 10 get 1 point. If more than one player is ranked the same, the points for those positions are added together and averaged, and each player gets those points. So, for example, if the first five players are all ranked 1, they would get 8 points each. Also, the place in the voting is calculated, not necessarily taken from the ballot. In the above example, if the next player was ranked 2, the program recognizes that it’s really a sixth place vote, and that’s what the player is credited with.
Okay, now that I’ve confused you all, here are the results:
Votes by Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Points Hank Aaron 49 29 16 10 7 5 2 2 3 4 1028.0 Willie Mays 30 24 30 11 8 11 8 2 3 0 966.5 Greg Maddux 14 18 14 18 27 13 12 8 2 1 830.0 Cal Ripken Jr. 20 16 14 12 5 13 13 18 15 1 760.5 Nolan Ryan 12 13 13 20 13 16 8 16 16 0 738.5 George Brett 8 10 12 14 22 23 18 17 3 0 728.5 Johnny Bench 5 6 10 19 22 26 22 13 3 1 699.5 Tony Perez 2 4 8 8 11 17 27 24 17 9 538.0 Rickey Henderson 4 6 3 10 5 7 13 15 56 8 461.5 Pete Rose 5 1 1 3 2 0 1 3 12 99 234.0
No suprise to me that Aaron is the most admired player of this group. Being sent to integrate southern baseball in the 1950’s earns him a lot of respect. I probably would have voted Maddux over Mays, because Mays was briefly banned for baseball for working for a casino, but that’s pretty minor. Ripken, Ryan, Brett and Bench are pretty interchangable. I got the feeling people didn’t know much about Tony Perez, and he was the least talented of this group (that’s not saying he wasn’t a superb player). People don’t like Rickey. I would have rated him higher, since I think he gets a lot of bad press. He’s a better guy than he comes off being, but he’s never done anything to polish his image (like getting an education). And there’s Pete, bringing up the rear.
It looks like I’ll be snowed in tomorrow, so I’ll go through the comments then and publish some of them.