PETE ROSE ADMITS BETTING ON BASEBALL IN NEW BOOK

ESPN ^ | 1/3/2004 | ESPN.COM

[szweig]

Well, the problem with betting on your own team is very simple - what happens the next time that you DON't bet on your team to win? The fact that you didn't make a bet says something about your team. This is why you just don't bet on baseball, especially your own team. That said...Rose probably should be in the HOF only for his on-the-field accomplishments...SSZ

[PRND21]

You don't understand. Baseball's Hall of Fame is very prestigious, much more rigorous than the other professional sports.

Tony Perez and Don Sutton come to mind. However, I agree about continuing the ban.

[bootyist-monk]

Rose is baseball's greatest hitter. Let him in the hall. Rapists, murderers, drunks and drug addicts can be found in various Halls of Fame. A recovering, arrogant gambler who had the sweetest swing the game has ever seen and played with a fire and intensity that none of the 100 million dollar babies of today can approach deserves his place in history, warts and all.

And let in Shoeless Joe while you're at it.

[Mr. Mojo]

He [Rose] is the greatest hitter of all time.

Not even close. Let's compare Rose with Cobb:

Lifetime batting ave: Rose: .303, Cobb: .366 (the best of all time).
RBI's per year: Rose: 60, Cobb: 103
Stolen bases: Rose: 9, Cobb: 48
Hits per year: Rose: 194, Cobb: 224
Strikouts per year: Rose: 71, Cobb: 9 (that's right, only 9).

It's not even close. Cobb over Rose by a wide margin.

[dfwgator]

The other problem with betting on your own team is that you make go all out to win that game, even if hurts your team in the long run, i.e. overusing your pitcher. Baseball almost died after the Black Sox scandal, and it is the easiest game to fix. Baseball must absolutely enforce lifetime bans to keep the integrity of the game.

[Faraday]

Whether Pete goes into the HoF is of little importance to me. But as a Milwaukee resident I must say, any decision which depends of the ethical judgement of Bud Selig is more than a little suspect.

[Mr. Mojo]

Strikouts per year: Rose: 71, Cobb: 9

That one I got wrong. It's actually Rose: 52, Cobb: 19. ......Still a large discrepancy..

[dakine]

Baseball's greatest hitter is Ted Williams....

[Mr. Mojo]

why not just induct him into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Gambler's Hall of Fame and the Liar's Hall of Fame all at the same time?

Because he's both a lousy gambler and a lousy liar.

[Mr. Mojo]

Baseball's greatest hitter is Ted Williams....

Hard to argue with that. I'd put Ruth, Cobb, and Gehrig in the 2nd tier.

[wardaddy]

Bump....and don't forget that being racially insensitive is the absolute worst thing anyone can do...worse than incest, rape or pillaging. (I bet Cobb did all that too...or at least thought of it..lol)

[dakine]

Agree, Baseball's greatest PLAYER is Babe Ruth, no one can compare...

[Mr. Mojo]

Although Teddy Ballgame never proved himself in the postseason. In his only WS appearance he went 5 for 25 with 0 hr's, 1 rbi, and 5 so's. Ruth and Gehrig dominated in the postseason.

[bobo1]

Baseball is not something that I have kept current with over the years. However, I was an avid fan when I was a young'in.

Pete deserves to be in the Hall of Fame due to his accomplishments on the field, not as a manager and his stupid indescretions. I watched the Ty Cobb Story with Tommy Lee Jones. Ty Cobb was one of the hero's in the books I read as a child. Among the books I read of my hero's were kid books on Mickey Mantle, Duke Snider, PeeWee Reese, Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Warren Spawn, Grover Cleveland Alexander, and countless others that come to mind, (see I was a Dodger fan when I was little).

I do not know what their politics were and their indiocyncracies. All I can understand is, if their afterworks were stupid, or maybe they were stupid while playing, that should not be the standard for judging what was accomplished on the playing field. This is black and white to me, it is judged by what was done in the parameters of playing on the field. Political and social considerations are not to be weighed in the balance.

Just my take, blessings, bobo

[William McKinley]

I don't know. The way I see it, he went out of his way to smear Vincent and others as lying about him, when in reality he simply didn't want to face consequences he did not agree with.

I think trying to destroy someone's integrity, when you know they are telling the truth, is pretty hateful.

[Mr. Mojo]

Cobb was something else, wasn't he? I believe he jumped into the stands to knife some fan ....in the opposition's ballpark, no less.

[Tall_Texan]

...any decision which depends of the ethical judgement of Bud Selig is more than a little suspect.

LOL!

[bobo1]

That is a fact. Ted Williams was. If it wasn't for WWII, he would have showed up more in the record books. He was a "man", Whoops, so was Stan "the man" Musial (ack! I can't spell his name?)

blessings, bobo

[Khurkris]

BaseBall has historically been, and to a much lesser extent currently, a game of interesting/colorful characters. It has never, to my knowledge, been promoted as a morals play.

The hate filled bile-spewing posts I see about Pete Rose tell me more about the posters than about Pete.

He never claimed to be an angel. He never claimed to be a rosket scientist. He was a BaseBall player and a damn good one. His record indicates his worthiness for inclusion in the Hall of Fame.