Say this for third base: It has the best nickname of any position in baseball. Truth is, though, the hot corner can be pretty cold.

“Don’t let the hot corner concept fool you,” Mike Schmidt, the greatest third baseman in major league history, said by phone on Thursday. “The third baseman’s got his own little corner to protect, some down-the-line pop-ups and a couple of bunt plays here and there, but for the most part, a third baseman can go an entire game and never see any defensive action at all. The shortstop’s got to be all over the place on the field. If you play shortstop, you can play anywhere on the field. Going from short to third, it’s a walk in the park.”

Schmidt made the move in the minors, won 10 Gold Glove awards with the Philadelphia Phillies and sailed into the Hall of Fame on his first try, in 1995. Yet his position is the thinnest on the Cooperstown roster, and nobody quite knows why. Chipper Jones, elected on Wednesday, is just the 17th Hall of Famer whose primary position was third base. Only eight of those players made their major league debut after Jackie Robinson integrated the majors in 1947.

“I don’t know, maybe the life span of a third baseman is not what it should be,” Jones said on Thursday, at a news conference in Midtown Manhattan. “We’re known as hockey goalies down there, just trying to knock stuff down. That’s a great question. I’m proud to be a part of that very small fraternity.”