So we’re just around the corner from full Hall of Fame voting time, and in a very stupid, very real way the chances of our good friend Tim Raines making it could creep just a little closer.

Raines probably has the numbers to justify inclusion, but that’s never enough in its own right. And he probably has the connections, but that won’t work just yet. People may point to some of Raines’ off-field issues as a major hindrance, but Raines found it in him to not only admit his problems but to also actually deal with them; if he’s never inducted, it’s hard to imagine Raines adopting some pathetic, self-loathing stance along the lines of “I feel I deserve this. I put up Hall of Fame numbers during the greatest era of baseball for availability of fine Colombian powder, and I played with a coke problem. Only cokeheads can know what I went through.”

No, what Raines needs is a counterpart, an ally, someone historically linked and numerically similar enough for Hall of Fame voters to agree that if Player A deserved enshrinement, Player B deserves enshrinement as well. Generally speaking, this constitutes 100 percent of all arguments for any player’s worthiness.

Ever.

Bert Blyleven, they say, should be in because Don Sutton is in; Billy Williams’ entry, they’ll tell you, should warrant Jim Rice’s. Here on 35th Street, we long for the day someone actually makes the argument that if Bob Gibson made the Hall, there is no good reason for Jack Morris not to.

Easily at the top of this year’s ballot, and possibly the surest bet for a unanimous induction to come along in many years, sits none other than the Man of Steal, Rickey Henderson himself. We won’t bore you with the litany of Rickey’s accomplishments, or retell all the hilarious stories about him, or remind you how Rickey Henderson’s illeism made Rickey Henderson one of the most quotable players to ever play the game that Rickey Henderson played, whether they were in Rickey Henderson’s era or in an era in which Rickey Henderson did not play, of which there were not many because Rickey Henderson played an astounding 25 seasons’ worth of Rickey Henderson baseball, and Rickey Henderson played each and every one of them well because that is how Rickey Henderson plays the game Rickey Henderson plays.

Once Rickey gets in, however, there is no argument left against Raines. None. Because the only knock against Raines, if you think about it, was that he wasn’t as good as Rickey. Rickey hit more home runs, walked more, won more awards, stole more bases, scored more runs, drove more in, even played in more All-Star Games. But so what? Rickey did more of all of that than just about anyone; to fault Raines for the existence of Rickey would be to blame Ty Cobb for Babe Ruth.

Let’s forget the numbers for a second and look at the big picture. Rock was so good, the owners had to join forces to keep him from playing. Despite that, Rock had such good favor within the game that on October 3, 2001, the Montreal Expos traded him to the Baltimore Orioles just so he could play take the field with his son, Tim Raines, Jr. Rock was 41 years old by then.

Not that the numbers are anything to run from, either: after a poor 2002 season with the Marlins, he retired with a .294/.385/.425 line. He drove in 980 runs, but somehow brought home 524 while batting leadoff. He registered an OPS+ of 123; by the time he got to the batter’s box, Raines was already on his way to second.

He stole 808 bases, second in his time only to you-know-who. Scored 100 runs on five separate occasions. Raines also drew 1,330 walks, and every person ahead of him is either in the Hall or on their way. A career .270/.340/.349 hitter in the postseason too, so don’t even try to argue he folded in the clutch.

But first things first: Rickey gets in without question. Anyone who doesn’t vote for Rickey doesn’t deserve to vote for the Hall, end of story. But once Rickey gives his surely brilliant third-person speech (“Rickey Henderson is very honored to see Rickey Henderson in Cooperstown”), there will be no more fighting it. The only decent logic might be that Raines shouldn’t be honored before Rickey simply because he retired two years prior, and that’s mostly understandable – but that will also have been rendered irrelevant.

After that? After that we start the million-to-one campaign for his hat to say Sox instead of Expos.