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This is the man who could have used the hook slide rather than plowing like a hijacked airliner into Cleveland Indians catcher Ray Fosse, to score the winning run in an All-Star Game that was neither meaningless nor of championship import. Technically (the rule against blocking the plate is never enforced officially), Fosse may have assumed a given risk, but he was more a step or two up and in front of the line, priming for a sweep tag. But deeming a part of town high crime "as a rule" does not grant thugs a right or licence to rob, mug, rape, or murder.

Rose was entitled to his part of the plate, regardless of the month or festivity of the moment.

When he stepped between the chalked lines, Rose had one intention.........win.

He should be be in the HOF.

If Giamatti were to roll over in his grave, nobody would care.

Rose was entitled to his part of the plate, regardless of the month or festivity of the moment.

When he stepped between the chalked lines, Rose had one intention.........win.

The question isn't his desire to win, the question is proportion - particularly in a game which is not entirely meaningless (or wasn't, in the days before Jerky Joe Torre, Buffaloed Bob Brenly, and Blowhard Bud Selig) but is certainly not championship important. If Ray Fosse is not strictly speaking blocking the plate - as in, he is not (he was not) covering or smothering over the plate itself, but was a step or three up and in front of the baseline - how on earth was Pete Rose denied "his" part of the plate?

You're not questioning a man's desire to win to suggest that there is a line to be drawn between hard clean play and disproportionate hard play, and that there had indeed been times when he crossed that line.

He should be be in the HOF.

I think so, too...after he is reinstated to baseball. And not until then. The Hall of Fame has every right to formulate its own eligibility requirements, including the one that denies eligibility to those on the baseball-ineligible list. Had Pete Rose been voted in despite his having been declared ineligible for breaking a rule that baseball had established well enough before Pete Rose was even born, it would have been a travesty. It's not the Hall's fault that Rose isn't in yet, and I think Rose has more than served his time, so to say. But read again the comment from Bill James with which I closed the essay. My call: Sooner or later, and well enough before he is dead, Pete Rose will be reinstated - and, thus, will be elected to the Hall of Fame.

If Giamatti were to roll over in his grave, nobody would care.

Quite wrong. Rose himself acknowledges Giamatti wasn't his real enemy in the commissioner's office; to this day, he cites the precise language in both the formal agreement and Giamatti's declaration that he should be allowed reinstatement after a year. Rose had no reason to fault or doubt Giamatti, but of course Rose and everyone else could not have expected Giamatti to die before a week after the ruling's announcement. If anything, Pete Rose's real enemy was Fay Vincent, who may well have jammed Dingbat Joe Dowd down the throat of the commissioner's office and who turns out to have been less than we once thought him to be, on reinspection. I don't question Vincent loves baseball as deeply as Giamatti did, but I think it should be questioned whether Vincent was quite the gentle giant he has often been cracked up to be, even if you do feel sorry for his having been overthrown by Bug Selig.