Jan. 9 -- RIPKEN, GWYNN GET HALL PASS

As expected, Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. have been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, both by resounding margins. Of the 545 ballots cast, Ripken appeared on 537 (98.84 percent), Gwynn on 532 (97.6 percent). Here's a look at the complete voting results.

Also, as expected, Mark McGwire was denied election in his first year of eligibility. I was a little surprised that Big Mac received as few votes as he did (only 128 votes or 23.5 percent). Candidates need 75 percent for enshrinement in Cooperstown, and my hunch is McGwire will get nothing close to that number until he goes public with details of exactly what substances he used during his playing days. Until then, the whispers about his possible steroid use will doom his candidacy.

To answer Jill's question from a previous post: The balloting is secret, so it's not clear which voters omitted Ripken or Gwynn. One voter, Paul Ladewski of the Daily Southtown (near Chicago), revealed that he submitted a blank ballot as a personal protest of players from the Steroid Era. I'd imagine the other voters who shunned Ripken and Gwynn had similar reasons.

As I wrote in a previous post, the Hall of Fame voting, like most other things, is subjective. And, it's a free country. Writers may do whatever they want with their ballot. So, I will refrain from ripping other writers on this blog because we're all entitled to our opinion. That said, I remain confident in the writers' ability to vote for the Hall of Fame, and I reiterate that no writer I know takes this privilege lightly. Jill: If writers who've covered the game for 10 or more years shouldn't vote for the Hall of Fame, who should? Players and managers have biases, too.

I don't have a vote. Not yet, anyway. But I can tell you there isn't any way I would've excluded Ripken or Gwynn from my ballot. I grew up watching both of them play, and in addition to being supremely talented, they were role models and ambassadors of the game. I spent about two hours on the phone today, participating in national conference calls with Ripken and Gwynn, and it was refreshing to hear Gwynn talk about "losing it" this morning when he received the official call.

Funny story about Ripken: He said he was taking a shower this morning, before he received the call, and suddenly, there was no hot water. He said it reminded him of his early years in the minors when, at many little ballparks in many small towns, the demand for hot water exceeded the supply, leaving players to take cold showers.

When it comes to the Hall of Fame, though, Ripken wasn't going to be left out in the cold.