Good post Russ. I never questioned his candidacy. I don’t even argue that he shouldn’t be entered into the HOF.

My point is that Ripken’s durability allowed his full body of work to make him look like a better baseball player than he was in actuality.

When you break it down, as I did in my post, he wasn’t “great” at anything other than staying healthy. He wasn’t fast like Rickey Henderson, he never had power like Mickey Mantle, he wasn’t a hitter like Boggs (or Gwynn!), he wasn’t a defensive magician like Ozzie Smith.

He wasn’t great at anything in particular in terms of baseball skills.

And to Joe’s point, he wasn’t even a great team leader.