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King Kaufman's Sports Daily

The best fielders of all time! (Or at least since '57.) There must have been online voting shenanigans, which is just how it should be.

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Aug. 23, 2007 | Fun publicity stunt by Rawlings, a leading marketer and manufacturer of baseball equipment and other sporting goods in the United States.

Hey, do a fun publicity stunt and I'll hook you up.

Rawlings announced its all-time Gold Glove team, actually the All-Time Rawlings Gold Glove Award® Team, since the award is trademarked, but I only go so far with these things.

It asked 70 baseball experts -- players, managers, writers -- to come up with a list of 50 of the greatest fielders since 1957, which is as far as "all time" goes because that's when the Gold Glove award was introduced. Fans voted online, though I didn't hear about it, not that I'd have voted anyway. Here are the winners, and see if you can spot the one who's not like the others:

P Greg Maddux
C Johnny Bench
1B Wes Parker
2B Joe Morgan
SS Ozzie Smith
3B Brooks Robinson
OF Roberto Clemente
OF Willie Mays
OF Ken Griffey Jr.

Wes Parker?

He played for the Los Angeles Dodgers from the mid-'60s to the early '70s, sort of the J.T. Snow of his day, an all-field, not-much-hit -- considering the position -- first baseman who retired at 32 after a perfectly good season because he just didn't want to play anymore. He recognized the incongruity right away.

"I'm the only one of the nine who will not be in the Hall of Fame," he told USA Today. "So this is the equivalent of the Hall of Fame for me."

I don't know what kind of voting irregularities had to happen to win an online contest for a mostly forgotten guy like Parker, who at any given time in his career was less famous than about a half dozen of his teammates, and that was 40 years ago. But I'm all for 'em.

I mean, why have an online contest if the whole thing's going to wind up making sense?

If Rawlings wanted highly debatable results, it could have saved time by just listing the all-time Gold Glove leaders, since the voting for that award is goofy enough, weighted as it is toward reputation and offensive prowess. I get that that wouldn't have resulted in all those hits on the Web site.

Next page: Comparing the online-vote team to the all-Gold Glove team: Where's Mazeroski?

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