I never set out to be The Ultimate Czar of Overratedness and Underratedness.
It just happened.
One minute, I was merely an ordinary guy, typing his Rumblings and Grumblings. The next, I was pounding on a keyboard, bound for authorhood.
Overrated-underrated authorhood.
Now, 60,000 words of pounding later, I'm the official author of "The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History."
And along the way, I came to understand a lot more about the concepts of overratedness and underratedness than I used to. I understand they're not as clear-cut as they seem on the radio, anyway.
So before I kick off my list of the 10 most overrated active players, I need to explain what I mean when I call somebody overrated.
It doesn't mean he stinks. It doesn't mean he should be clearing tables at Pizza Hut. It doesn't mean his current team should release him. It doesn't mean his former teams should sue him to try to recover all the money they once paid him.
It doesn't mean any of that, at least to me.
Overratedness -- like underratedness -- is all relative, remember. It's about perception. It's about illusion. It's about myths. It's about assumptions we tend to make about all kinds of players -- assumptions that sometimes turn out not to match up real well with a condition best described as "reality."
So the question I kept aspiring to answer as I wrote my book -- and as I wrote this companion column -- was this:
How does the perception of this player match up with the kind of player he really is (or was)?
That's all I was interested in. Really. Just because I call a guy overrated, it doesn't mean I hate him. Or I'm out to get him. Or I've been seeking revenge for precisely 12 years, 2 months and 17 days -- ever since he blew me off when I was waiting around to ask him how come he dropped a popup one night.
I don't operate like that.
In fact, if the players on this overrated list really think it all through, they'll realize that, in a way, it's almost a compliment to be called overrated. You can't be overrated unless millions of people are walking the streets of America, thinking you're good, right?
So because of that theory of relativity, you can be a great player and still be overrated. You can be a Hall of Famer and still be overrated. Maybe it doesn't work that way in everybody's book. But it works that way in my book. Remember now, I'm an illusion-versus-reality kind of guy. Kinda like David Copperfield.
Oh. And one more thing we need to get straight before you start typing those "are-you-some-kind-of-knucklehead" e-mails: I'm really not the Ultimate Czar of Overratedness and Underratedness. I'm just the guy who wrote the book.
Your opinion is as good as mine. Maybe not as exhaustively researched. But you sure have a right to it. So I don't pretend to settle these debates. I just start them. Simply providing a valuable public service by allowing you, the American sports fan, to do what you enjoy most about sports:
Argue.
OK, here they come -- the 10 most overrated active players in baseball. Some of these players made it into my book. Some didn't. On the other hand, some guys who were in the book didn't make this list. The difference? The book was mostly about assessing careers. This column is more about where these players stand on the illusion/reality meter right now. Got that? All righty then, here we go:
Top Ten List (Details on Each If You Go To The Link)
1. Barry Zito
2. JD Drew
3. Andruw Jones
4. Juan Pierre
5. Bobby Abreu
6. Brian Giles
7. Alfonzo Soriano
8. Richie Sexson
9. Bob Wickman
10. Jeff Suppan