There are actually a full dozen regular baseball columnists on the WorldWide Leader's site -- since our poll only has room for 10, apologies to Eric Karabell, who primarily focuses on fantasy ball, and to Steve Phillips, who is more of a Baseball Tonight TV guy.

Please register your complaints below.

I think my actual answer at this point would be "I don't know", since I read so few of them, but that wasn't an option, and I can't leave that damn poll question unanswered.

I voted for Kurkijan (I kinda' like his columns sometimes, and he writes for other places too), but mostly I don't read ESPN.com anymore, due to any number of reasons, mostly gotten into in the last poll (horribly busy webpage design, everyone is an  "insider", general low journalistic standards) I still like some of the corporate-safe snark on the Page 2 columns, and some of the stat splits are great (team totals by position I haven't found so easily anywhere else).  In the end I prefer to read a good give and take debate like I get to read here (and occasionally take part in as well).

Gammons leaps out to a lead ... huh, he "won" last year's poll, too.

If you voted for him, please tell us why ... I think he's good and all. but never understood the Gammons Iconography. Is it just a familiarity thing?

I probably voted for Neyer last year, don't remember, but now think of him as a writer more in his element in a book than a column. The two best, from my perspective, are clearly Olney and Caple. I voted Caple, but the coin could've landed on the other side easily enough.

I voted for Olney simply because his blog is my first stop every morning.

Now, if the poll was for most self-satisfied baseball columnist, old friend Keith Law would win in a landslide. 

Mick... Gammons has good sources and doesn't bore me with tiresome BS about what he thinks players/managers/GMs should act like and be like.  In that sense, he is unique among modern sportswriters.  Gammons is a 100% BS-free zone.

I vote for............. To continue reading this post you must be an ESPN Insider.

If you voted for [Gammons], please tell us why

What Craig said. And in grateful memory of the years and years and years when he was quite possibly the only decent writer working the beat.

You probably have to be as old as me to remember those dark days... before the Abstracts, even.

Gammons is great but he only writes about once per week.

Olney delivers the volume and is well connected, particularly in the AL East.

Rob Neyer delivers an outsiders view as he never talks to players or goes into the clubhouses.

Keith Law comes at his role from a scouts perspective and will opine on minor leaguers and newer major leaguers.

Those four deliver different perspectives on the game.  The others are more of a generic blend.

I agree with both of Braden's points, and I can't believe KL got 10 votes as the best of the bunch.  Really?  The best of this list?

I didn't vote.  I haven't been to espn.com in ages, and I don't intend to go back. I prefer the writing of THT, John Sickels, Aaron Gleeman, and many other places.  Chacun a son gout.

but never understood the Gammons Iconography

Back in the day, Gammons took a lot of flak for being a GM shill, floating trial balloons on their behalf (unwittingly so, many argued). And BP, in their early days, smacked him around pretty good, before he started imbuing his articles with OPS and the like.

And now, he's the vaunted grand old man of baseball journalism. And having survived his ill health, he's revered all the more.

I don't have an opinion on him one way or anther, but I do believe that he's been promoted, in the eyes of we teeming masses, from pedestrian hack to sacred cow. That's a neat trick.

Oh, and I voted for Neyer, not that I read him now that he's behind the wall (Mr. ESPN, tear down your wall), only because I don't care at all for the likes of Kurkjian, Olney, Crasnick and Stark. I may have to align my bookmarks more closely with Mr. Green's to ensure that I more often read the writers that I do respect.

Rob Neyer delivers an outsiders view as he never talks to players or goes into the clubhouses.

Actually, there was a stretch several years ago where he interviewed a bunch of GM's. He's always been the type to exchange e-mails with readers, and he and I exchanged a few on this topic. Knowing that he was going to interview Allard Baird (then the GM of his beloved Royals), I asked him if he wasn't worried about the personal contact causing him to lose his objectivity (I expressed a concern that it would). I asked him that if Baird turned out to be a really nice guy, could he still criticize him as harshly. After the interview, he told me that he did in fact find Baird to be a very generous and gracious fellow (and not in a calculating way), and he conceded that this would likely have an impact on his writing.