Fans were allowed to vote 22 times on the Internet, the average number of home games for each team during the balloting. Nandor's attempt to vote 25,000 times was detected before it could be added to the tally, according to Alex Tam, director of Major League Baseball's web site. It might have worked, but Nandor had attempted the ploy earlier in the voting period. On May 19, he voted 14,702 times for Garciaparra. We caught all of them and filtered them out.
Nothing is foolproof.
But if you're talking about the average high-end hacker, we think we can catch them. Nandor thought for a time he'd made the difference. But I also thought it could've been other people in addition to mine. Nandor said he didn't do it just for kicks. I think in large part I did it just because the All-Star game was going to be in Fenway, so I felt Nomar deserved a start on his home turf, with the incredible season he's had.