Pete Rose's Pony Ride

The Polo Grounds: A Calm Review of Baseball ^ | 23 July 2002 | Jeff Kallman

[BluesDuke]

For better or worse, Pete Rose will crop up whenever the Hall of Fame election and induction ceremonies crop up, not to mention the sort of thing for which baseball government does see fit to engage him. With apologies to Ozzie Smith, whose induction comes this weekend and who richly deserves the Hall of Fame... but Pete Rose is simply not going to go away. And thanks to baseball government's behaviour regarding him since Giamatti's death, he has a point.

[BluesDuke]

Calling all my baseball people...calling all my baseball people...

[CARDINALRULES]

I believe Pete should be allowed into the HOF--based on his on-field performance.
Not so sure about the banned from baseball for life --I have changed my view on that a few times (right now I think he should remain banned).

I also want Shoeless Joe to be allowed in.

[hole_n_one]

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.

[Nonstatist]

Shoeless Joe deserves in before that dope dealing thug and cheat does. Given how absolutely compromised and squishy Major League Baseball has been in the past (Steve Howe violated drug rules 7 times!) I can't see how they can just ignore the perfidy of somebody who gambled on his own team (!) .

[BluesDuke]

I believe Pete should be allowed into the HOF--based on his on-field performance.

That's about the prime reason he does belong in the Hall of Fame.

Not so sure about the banned from baseball for life --I have changed my view on that a few times (right now I think he should remain banned).

I thought at first, and for a long time, that he should remain banned for life, too...until I actually sat down to read the Dowd Report. There's no question that Rose had been gambling chronically, enough so that he had to be given a time-out...but, I repeat: a finite time out. This was something even Bart Giamatti (who may have been as much a pawn as anything in this affair - Fay Vincent had actually pressed John Down upon the commissioner's office in early 1989...when Peter Ueberroth was finishing his term as commissioner and hoping the Rose matter would just dry up and blow away, and when Bart Giamatti was standing as commissioner-elect, more or less) acknowledged by way of proclaiming as he did that Rose could and should be allowed to apply for his reinstatement after a single year had passed. Giamatti's unexpected death unintentionally screwed that pooch bigtime, thanks to the actions of his successors (real and alleged).

I also want Shoeless Joe to be allowed in.

Ain't gonna happen. For better or worse, the fact that Jackson did at least accept delivery of that $5,000 envelope in the first place, and that he did acknowledge that he at least accepted being in on the fix in its beginning (see Holtzman and Haas's Baseball, Chicago Style), is what kills his chance of making it to Cooperstown. On a personal level, I think Jackson was probably more dumb than dishonest, and he certainly wasn't the instigator or even one of the primary movers of the fix - if anyone should share those dishonours, they are probably first baseman Chick Gandil and shortstop Swede Risberg. But there but for those two errors would Jackson never have lost his eligibility...and would have been a Hall of Famer.

[hole_n_one]

Shoeless Joe deserves in before that dope dealing thug and cheat does....

Source?

[BluesDuke]

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.

[Nonstatist]

You can find it here.. http://espn.go.com/mlb/news/2001/0807/1236330.html

[CARDINALRULES]

Yeah I know Joe won't be allowed in--but I still think he should be from some of what I have read about the scandal (been years and I can't remember the details--other than he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer --and most likely couldn't read).

I disliked Fay, but I really hate Bugsy and what he has done to the game in the last few years.
He doesn't take all the blame but a large portion of the current problems could have been handled differently.

[hole_n_one]

If Rose cleaning Fosse's clock at home was a dirty play, then they should discontinue the All-Star game to ensure that nobody gets a boo boo.

[hole_n_one]

I should have qualified my request as being a legitimate source.

[WFTR]

You do not absolve Pete Rose of his real enough sins (and if you think baseball's Hall of Fame has a small pocketful of shady characters and even criminal ones, you certainly have not had a look at the NFL lately), when you say that baseball government since Giamatti's death has behaved toward him in ways we would condemn if we saw the government government behaving likewise toward an ordinary citizen.

These folks apparently haven't been reading the news. Pete Rose was treated no worse than Billy Dale was. Did this guy condemn the Clinton administration for its treatment of Billy Dale? I hope so.

WFTR
Bill

[bobbyd]

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

HA!!! Too Funny!

Just think if Charlie Hustle had to go thru his probs in todays times!....there'd be a party in Cooperstown!

[BluesDuke]

Shoeless Joe deserves in before that dope dealing thug and cheat does.

Merely because Pete Rose happened to have some very sleazeoid friends who happened to be dealing in drugs (predominantly steroids, as I understand it to have been) does not mean that Pete Rose himself was dealing drugs. As for Shoeless Joe Jackson, see my comment above to the other gentleman.

Given how absolutely compromised and squishy Major League Baseball has been in the past (Steve Howe violated drug rules 7 times!)

I don't disagree on the manner in which Steve Howe wasn't dealt with - although I do know, also, that Fay Vincent became a little too heavy handed (I speak politely) with the Yankees when he got his eighth drug strike.

Little remembered: Vincent not only called three Yankee officials including then-manager Buck Showalter onto his carpet, he also bullied and browbeat them in so doing - he practically ordered Showalter onto the carpet and threatened both his job and his baseball eligibility to do it; in addition, he threatened all three officials because at least one and possibly two of them, in answering questions from Vincent's representatives, had enunciated their own questions about the substance and manner of MLB's drug policy - they were certainly entitled to speak thus, and they did not deserve to be threatened with their jobs and their standing to hold baseball jobs merely for disagreeing with either a particular policy or portions and operations thereof.

It didn't mean anyone sympathised necessarily with Steve Howe in order for people to realise that his maltreatment of those three Yankee officials (Showalter, famously enough, was held up by Vincent and his people from showing up for the Yankees' game in New York that day, and it was the talk of New York for a couple of days) was an indication that Vincent had gone too far in asserting himself something short of a dictator, rather than merely a "strong" commissioner. It's a bloody shame that it turned out to be Bug Selig who led the overthrow of Vincent, considering the unmitigated disaster Selig has been, but if it hadn't been him it would have been, likely enough, someone else.

I can't see how they can just ignore the perfidy of somebody who gambled on his own team (!).

Aside from the point that it is not proven once and for all that Rose bet on his own team (it is at least likely that his sleazeoid companions of the time were laying down bets on the Reds and claiming them to be Rose's bets), I would ask how on earth merely betting on one team is more perfidious than accepting a payoff in a plan to fix and throw a World Series.

[Nonstatist]

Gosh, it must be great to be able to discern legitimacy in such a facile way. Fact is, Giamatti was an " associate" of Rose's and his testimony has not been refuted anywhere.

I've read Giamatti's testimony and I believe it. Fact is, however, that not many people give a hoot about these facts or anything else about Rose either. He's a washed up low life who got what he deserved.

[hole_n_one]

Fact is, Giamatti was an " associate" of Rose's and his testimony has not been refuted anywhere. I've read Giamatti's testimony and I believe it.

Please tell me that Giamatti should read Gioiosa ........or now I'm gonna be really confused.

[BluesDuke]

Take another look at precisely where adjacent to the plate Fosse was positioned (he was primed to use the sweep tag on Rose; in fact, Fosse actually never got to even touch the incoming ball, Rose having arrived into his body about a split second before the ball arrived at his mitt), and then tell me Rose could not have scored that run with a good hook slide beneath a tag.

There is a distinction between disproportionate (which is what I call the play) and dirty (it was disproportionate and probably beyond the bound of sanity, but you and I both could probably name a few dozen other plays that could be classified as truly dirty plays). Rose was hardly the only player, of his or any time, to go disproportionate. And he won't be the last one, either. But if the All-Star Game is not supposed to be an exhibitionist's tea party, neither does it have proper bearing upon a pennant race. You can play the All-Star Game clean and hard to win without careening into the rough side of Cloud Cuckoo-land to do it.

[hole_n_one]

You can play the All-Star Game clean and hard to win without careening into the rough side of Cloud Cuckoo-land to do it.

You do have a way with words.

[BluesDuke]

Yeah I know Joe won't be allowed in--but I still think he should be from some of what I have read about the scandal (been years and I can't remember the details--other than he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer --and most likely couldn't read).

The best book about the 1919 World Series scandal, Eight Men Out, remains in print. As does Baseball, Chicago Style. Very worth reading. It's much as I posited above: Jackson, more dumb than dishonest, cooked himself by having accepted (albeit somewhat reluctantly) both the idea of the fix and at least that first $5,000 envelope. He may not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he at least understood a gambling or fixing payoff (the Black Sox were hardly the first baseball players of their day to get involved with fixing games, especially if the name Hal Chase rings a bell with you) when he saw one. And for this one, he paid with his baseball standing and the Hall of Fame enshrinement he will probably never earn. But if anyone could be called the true masterminds of the fix, it was, I repeat, shortstop Swede Risberg (the last of the Black Sox eight to die, incidentally) and first baseman Chick Gandil.