Welcome to Saturday Scorecard. We're so busy this weekend that we're going to have to carve out a few minutes to ignore the Tour de France.

On to the good stuff...

Taking a break: After being bombarded with stunning stories about steroids (Barry Bonds), dog fighting (Michael Vick) and crooked referees (Tim Donaghy), sports fans need a rest.

Thank heaven for Cooperstown.

With all the bad news bubbling, it is going to be refreshing to watch two of the classiest athletes of this generation, Tony Gywnn and Cal Ripken, Jr., be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Gwynn, whose outfielder son, Anthony, Jr., was sent by the Brewers to Class AAA Nashville earlier this week, admitted that he is a little nervous about his induction speech.

"There is no question the speech part of it has kept me awake at night," he said. "I want to do a good job, get my point across and tell people who helped me get to this point what they meant to me."

Gwynn, who spent his entire career with San Diego and finished with a .338 average and 3,141 hits, called the induction "the most exciting, gratifying thing that has happened to me on my career."

"I know for me, it's about me, my teammates, my organization and the people of this town," he said, referring to San Diego. "So I know when I'm standing at the podium, it's not just me there. It's a whole bunch of people there. I'm hoping that's what's going to make it a little bit easier for me."

While Ripken became a national figure when he broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive games record in 1995, Gwynn operated in the shadows because he was in a low-profile, West Coast market. The fact that he was not a power hitter made his journey even more unlikely.

"When my career started, nobody in their right mind had any thoughts of me getting to the Hall of Fame," he said. "As your career starts to add up, it starts to pan out and you start to be consistent and have success, when you're a contact hitter, that doesn't happen for at least 10 years. After that, when you show people that you can be consistent, people start asking that question: 'Can he get to 3,000?' Can he do what it takes to become a Hall of Famer. To be honest, I didn't know for sure until that phone rang on Jan. 9."

The theme of the ceremony will be longevity. Ripken and Gwynn each played their entire careers with one team, as did the winners of the Spink Award for baseball writers (Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) and the Frick Award for broadcasters (Denny Matthews).

"All of us spent our careers in one place," Gwynn said. "For me, it's going to be really interesting to hear everybody talk about their experiences."

Gwynn was regarded as a perfectionist at the plate and one of the hardest-working players in history. He was a pioneer in the use of video, often lugging two giant trunks of equipment with him during road trips.

Does he wish DVD technology had been invented then?

"No question," Gwynn said. "I would be two suitcases lighter. When I started using video in 1983 or '84, people thought I was out of my mind. 'What are you doing? Why are you taking this stuff? What good is this stuff.' You learn pretty quickly how to split cable, put the splitter on and run it back to the TV and run it to the recorder.

"There is no question I would not be going into the Hall of Fame without video I would not be going into the Hall of Fame without my wife hitting that record button for me. When Anthony was little, she was hitting that record button while he was running around the house naked and stuff. If she doesn't hit that button, I'm not sitting here in this position. What video did was help me to learn what type of player I was a whole lot sooner than I would have."

And what lessons did Gwynn learn?

"I kind of understood what I needed to do. I knew how I had to do it. Regardless of what people thought, I worked very hard at this game. That's why I'm proud as the type of player I was. I wasn't a home run hitter. I wasn't a power hitter. I was guy who put the bat on the ball and forced the defense to get you out. I'm very proud of the fact that I'm going into the Hall of fame as the type of player I was."

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