Character Counts. Whatever.

The overriding coverage of yesterday’s Hall of Fame inductions has been the usual hagiographic regarding Padres’ OF Tony Gwynn and Orioles’ SS Cal Ripken, Jr., especially with regard to the usual tendency of sportswriters to portray their preferred icons in two-dimensional terms, as this NY Sun column noted with regard to Ripken (thanks to JWeiler at TSF for finding the column). This tendency, combined with the fallout from the steroid era and Barry Bonds’ approaching of Henry Aaron’s record, serves as indirect commentary, complete with wistful tone about what baseball “used to be”; the ideal of the game that winds up reading like warmed-over George Will.

That’s exactly what the Post’s Thomas Boswell reads like in this column about character mattering with regard to Gwynn and Ripken’s inductions; feeding the old familiar trope that baseball and its most dogged protectors want to maintain at all counts: character counts, and the election of these two stands in stark contrast to Bonds and Mark McGwire, icons under scrutiny. Now, Gwynn and Ripken are first ballot HOFers, but with all the talk about “character” and “dedication”, and in Ripken’s case, being some sort of working-class hero who went to work every day. While the record itself is remarkable, as Stephen A. Smith said this morning on First Take: “He went to work. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

With this approach, you’d think the writing class would be actively pushing for the removal of say, Ty Cobb (by all accounts a loathsome human being), Gaylord Perry (acknowledged cheater with his junk balls, but one with 314 wins), and others who were less than complete saints.

A Hero’s Welcome to the Hall [Washington Post]
By Numbers Alone, Character Counts [Washington Post]
The ‘Padre Way’ To Immortality [San Diego Union-Tribune]
Remember Ripken, Not The Myth of Ripken [NY Sun]