The Nicest Guy In Baseball

I found an interesting article in Sports Illustrated yesterday. They took a poll of 464 major league players, and they asked them two simple questions: who is the friendliest guy currently playing in the majors? And on the other hand, who is the unfriendliest guy in baseball?

A lot of the guys you'd figure would be in both polls turned up.

The runaway winner for the friendliest guy in the game was the Tigers' Sean Casey (pictured). Curt Schilling (guess which poll he turned up on?) said on his blog this week that Casey was "arguably the nicest human being walking this planet." Casey got an amazing 46% of all the votes. (Players were not allowed to vote for teammates.) Jim Thome and Mike Sweeney were tied for second with 7%.

And interestingly enough, the next four players of the Friendliest list were all members of the 2004 Red Sox: Dave Roberts, David Ortiz, Johnny Damon and Kevin Millar. Just proves that the 2004 World Champions were a happy, friendly bunch. Here is the complete Nice Guy Top 10:

Sean Casey, Tigers 1B.....46%
Jim Thome, White Sox DH.....7%
Mike Sweeney, Royals DH.....7%
Dave Roberts, Giants CF...4%
David Ortiz, Red Sox DH.....4%
Johnny Damon, Yankees CF.....2%
Kevin Millar, Orioles 1B.....2%
Luis Gonzalez, Dodgers LF.....1%
Tony Clark, Dbacks 1B.....1%
Raul Ibanez, Mariners LF.....1%

The overall champion of the Unfriendliest list is....Barry Bonds. Big shock, eh? Mr. Warmth got 26% of all the votes. Jeff Kent, another bastion of sunshine, came in second at 20%. Alex Rodriguez, who wants everyone to love him but clearly does a rotten job of it, finished fourth at 12%. And yes, Curt Schilling popped up sixth at 4%. (Says a lot that Slappy got far more votes than Schill did.) A few other of the Usual Suspects you'd find on this list turned up, like Randy Johnson, Jose Guillen and A.J. Pierzynski. The complete list of Top 10 Grumps:

Barry Bonds, Giants LF.....26%
Jeff Kent, Dodgers 2B.....20%
A.J. Pierzynski, White Sox C.....13%
Alex Rodriguez, Yankees 3B.....12%
Randy Johnson, D-Backs SP.....4%
Curt Schilling, Red Sox SP.....4%
Jose Guillen, Mariners RF.....2%
Milton Bradley, A's CF.....1%
Jason Kendall, A's C.....1%
Chipper Jones, Braves 3B.....1%

I also noticed that no pitchers made the Top 10 Friendliest list. Could it be the pitchers overall just aren't nice guys?