The great Rembert Browne has the goods on Chipper Jones announcing he'll retire at year's end, and what that means for someone who doesn't spend every waking hour reminding people that the Braves did not, in fact, win the NL East 14 years in a row. For a short, well-done statistical take on Chipper's career, FanGraphs' Mike Axisa has you covered.

I have a different take (or more precisely, my buddy Aaron had a different take, he IM'd me demanding that I write it, and I agreed). It goes like this: As things stand now, Chipper Jones is a sure Hall of Famer. He's even a first-ballot Hall of Famer, despite the notoriously fickle leanings of some Hall voters who find it great sport to make former players and their families suffer a bit (or in some cases, die) before getting their reward. But what about his contemporaries, the best active major leaguers near the end of their careers? If they too announced they'd retire at the end of this season, would they make the Hall of Fame? Should they?