December 24, 2002

Rose Poll:

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.