Class of 2007

Last year the Baseball Hall of Fame engraved 88 words onto the plaque summarizing the career of relief pitcher Bruce Sutter . That's about a dozen more words than were used -- combined -- on the plaques of Ty Cobb , Walter Johnson and Babe Ruth , all members of the Hall's inaugural 1936 class.

If it were up to electee Cal Ripken Jr. , he'd like his plaque to reflect the bygone era of concise platitudes, condensing his approach to the 3,001 regular season games he played with a single word.

"I think I'd like to be referred to as a 'gamer,'" the Orioles legend said. "Someone that loved and respected the game."

Longtime Padres outfielder Tony Gwynn offered the adjectives "consistent" and "conservative" for his plaque and stressed that he, like his Hall of Fame classmate, spent the entirety of his career with just one team.

"When you hear my name, you don't think about a left-handed singles hitter," Gwynn said in the ornate Empire Room of New York 's Waldorf-Astoria hotel. "... Hopefully, you think about the Padres and you think about baseball."

And the word Ripken used to describe Jim Rice was "dominant," but the Red Sox left fielder was merely a Hall of Fame also-ran, falling 63 votes short of election.

Rice, an eight-time All-Star who finished in the top five for American League MVP six times (winning it in 1978), gained nine votes from last year to this, but with a record number of ballots cast, he actually fell to 63.5 percent backing, well short of the necessary 75 percent.

The most notably absent word for most of Wednesday's news conference -- for a while, anyway -- was the most redundant of the Hall of Fame voting season: steroids. In a refreshing reprieve, not once was the "s word" uttered in the first 40 minutes of questions. It wasn't until Gwynn and Ripken met individually with smaller groups of reporters did anyone in the room address the large elephant in the room or the large Cardinals slugger who was not.

Tragically, though not unexpectedly, the cloud of steroid suspicion hovering over the Hall of Fame candidacy of Mark McGwire managed to overshadow the decline in support for Rice.

Rice still has two years of eligibility on the writers' ballot, but this year would have been a perfect opportunity to send him a long overdue invitation to Cooperstown , as it would have validated the careers of sluggers competing in the pre-tainted era of power numbers. Rice led the AL in home runs three seasons, twice winning when only 39 home runs were necessary. Though his production tailed off in his final three seasons, Rice was a consistently superior player from his first full season in 1975 through 1986. In the bookend years of that period, Rice finished third in the MVP voting both times.