Just for the record, I voted for Derek Jeter, so dont blame me.

The former New York Yankees shortstop is a living legend, but Jeter still fell short of unanimous approval for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Proving you cant please all the people all the time, Jeter received 396 votes out of 397 voters, sending the baseball world atwitter on Twitter and elsewhere.

Whos the jerk? at least one online commenter demanded. Because voters are not required to make their ballots public (though most voluntarily do), the identity of Jeters naysayer remained anonymous, which he or she would be wise to maintain, unless egging is on this years home renovation plans.

Four theories exist for why anyone would deny Jeter an honor he so obviously earned. One is Yankee-hating, which didnt keep Mariano Rivera from becoming, in 2019, the first (and only) unanimous selection in the Hall of Fames 80-year history.

Maybe the voter cares only about home runs, of which Jeter hit only a modest 260. Some of those came at the biggest moments of his career. If thats the reason, the voter should be voting.

Jeter is also part of Miami Marlins ownership. Having stripped down the team and payroll to non-competitive levels, he has disillusioned what few Marlins fans are known to exist.

The other and most plausible reason is that some voters have always felt a player should not be elected in his first year of eligibility. There is no logic to that thinking, and its popularity has diminished, as proven by Riveras vote - though Jeters vote suggests there may be at least one holdout left.

Jeter says he totally doesnt care who dissed him. We shouldnt, either, if only because unanimous approval is turning into a modern expectation with no basis in history.

Is Babe Ruth a Hall of Famer? In 1936, the year after Ruth had retired and in the first Hall of Fame vote, 11 of the 226 voters didnt think so. Ty Cobb had the highest vote that year. Even he was left off four ballots.

Willie Mays was pretty good. He received 94.7 percent of the vote. Hank Aaron, whose 755 home runs is still the record if we dismiss Barry Bonds steroid-tainted 762, claimed 97.8 percent.

Hey, Red Sox fans, think Ted Williams earned a plaque? He was elected in 1966, but 20 of the 302 voters werent impressed enough (or didnt like him, or didnt want a first-time nominee to make it.) After Rivera, the closest unanimous votes have almost entirely been for players of recent generations - Ken Griffey Jr., (99.3 percent with three nays in 2016), Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Cal Ripken Jr., and George Brett.

They are the only players ever to receive more than 98 percent. One of the most confounding votes came in 2014, when 16 of 571 voters left 355-game winner Greg Maddux off.

One guy said he refused to vote for any players from the Steroid Era - ignoring there was no question Maddux was clean. Not only did he pile up victory totals more attuned to 19th Century baseball than the 21st, he did it while competing against cheats.

And people wonder why folks dont like media, which supplies the voters through the Baseball Writers Association of America, to which I belong.

But how important, really, is a unanimous vote? How important is it to please everybody, or even almost everybody?

Losing two states in 1936 didnt stop Franklin Roosevelt from political immortality. Losing only one (ours) in 1972 didnt save Richard Nixon from ignominy.

If Jeters lost vote resulted from the not-the-first-time thinking, he wouldnt be the first. Basketball fans were amazed when Dominique Wilkins, who retired as the No. 6 all-time scorer in NBA history and was still ninth after the five-year retirement waiting period, wasnt elected to the Hall of Fame in his first eligible year.

Wilkins was elected in 2006, his second year. "'Nique,' you must have had a great year last year (while retired),'' Charles Barkley cracked.

Who cares who didnt choose Jeter? Id like to know the thinking behind the single votes cast for Brad Penny and J.J. Putz. I covered those guys, unaware I was in the presence of immortality.

The Baseball Hall of Fame remains one of the very few American institutions whose value remains cloaked of mythology. Most of our others have been stripped bare - politics, religion, entertainment and so on.

We see all their warts and human failings. We see those in baseball, too, but the sport still matters to enough people to push back against those failings (steroid use, sign-stealing cheating), rather than blandly accepting that since nothing is perfect, high standards are pointless exercises in pretense and futility.

Jeters selection is special because his career wasnt all about numbers, the likes of which can be spit out of a computer and define a mans lifes work as if it were a math equation. Modern defensive metrics didnt even exist when Jeter joined the Yankees in 1995. Today, they characterize him as an average or even mediocre shortstop.

If that explains the no voter, the voter never saw Jeter play. Those who did were not fooled by man-made statistics.

By missing unanimous acclaim, Jeter joins Ruth, Aaron, Williams, Mays and everybody not named Rivera in Cooperstown. He joins Carl Yastrzemski, whose 1967 season redefined Red Sox history - yet landed him one vote shy of unanimous Most Valuable Player selection, because one petulant Minnesota writer chose the Twins Cesar Tovar - who hit .267 with six homers and 47 RBIs (to Yaz .326-44-121) and whose team lost the pennant to Boston.

If we think greatness is measured by unanimous acclaim, we might remember Abraham Lincoln, who turned out to be a pretty good president. The fledging Republican Party must have known it; they nominated Honest Abe in 1860. Even if it they didnt do it until the third ballot.

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Even Jeter (and Lincoln) couldnt please everybody (Viewpoint) - MassLive.com