Warren, the Gwynn and Ripken naysayers remind me of the nuns when I was in grammar school who wouldn’t give you an “A” in the first quarter, even if you deserved one, on the theory that thereafter you would have nothing to strive for. (Now, I imagine, they wouldn’t give an “A” because it might damage the self-esteem of the kid who only got a “B” and, hey, what does it matter anyway … but I digress.)

It can’t be that they don’t think Gwynn and Ripkin belong. It is that they don’t believe they should have been in as first-round inductees. That’s dumb. Once a player is in, he’s in — the bust doesn’t come with an asterisk that indicates how many years it took the guy to get elected.