Pete Rose's Pony Ride

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

[Nonstatist]

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.

You're probably right on both counts, but I think I'd take Vincent over Selig any day of the week. Selig and his policies (as well as the obduracy of the Players Union) will be the death of baseball, literally

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.

But as you mentioned, Shoeless Joe was a naif and not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And practically a victim himself. Rose's antics over 20 years has been, in aggregate, shameful, IMO (and others). At least I , personally, don't miss him.

[BluesDuke]

Did this guy condemn the Clinton administration for its treatment of Billy Dale? I hope so.

I am "this guy" (I am the author of the essay which opens this thread; I happen to be a professional writer) and yes, I was quite vocal - on this forum and a couple of others, when the occasion arose - in condemning the Clinton Administration's treatment of Billy Dale. Come to think of it, I was usually pretty vocal in condemning the Clinton Administration, period. But precisely what Billy Dale's treatment by the Clintonistas has to do with Pete Rose's by Giamatti's successors (it wasn't, for one thing, Giamatti or his successors who got Pete Rose in trouble with the tax man, nor did Pete Rose's trouble with the tax man involve his gambling) escapes me for the moment...

[BluesDuke]

You do have a way with words.

That's why they pay me the big pocket change! ;)

[Nonstatist]

Giamatti should read Gioiosa

Right! (my apologies!)

[hole_n_one]

FYI........

A City on Fire: The Story of the '68 Detroit Tigers. The true story of a team that helped heal a shattered city. Tuesday, July 30 at 10 pm.

HBO

[hole_n_one]

I happen to be a professional writer

I find that to be an understatement.

[hole_n_one]

Thank God!

I thought it was me!

LOL!

[BluesDuke]

But as you mentioned, Shoeless Joe was a naif and not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

He was a functional illiterate, strictly speaking. But he was not entirely unaware of game fixing (it had, in fact, run rampant in baseball and such other professional sports as existed in the 1910s and 1920s). And he was certainly aware enough of the motive which animated the fix in the first place, namely: the Risberg-Gandil faction of White Sox who'd felt (rightly enough) burned to a crisp by White Sox owner Charles Comiskey's perfidious ways with money. (As a matter of fact, it may have been so that the actual impetus for the fix was Comiskey's attempt to cheat pitcher Eddie Cicotte out of a bonus his contract called for paying him if he should win 30 games in 1929; Cicotte was benched with 29 wins and told by his manager he was being rested for the World Series; Cicotte was silently outraged. As it turned out, it was Cicotte's confession which broke the silence a year after the 1919 World Series and broke the scandal open at last.)

Jackson probably did have second thoughts about the fix in the end - his play in the World Series leaves it a very open question. But the fact that he did know of and participate in the fix's beginning (third baseman Buck Weaver, the eighth man out, never accepted a payoff but got banned because he knew of the fix and said nothing), and that he did accept at least the initial $5,000 envelope early in the Series, is what attached the black marks to him. It is a sad story; Jackson otherwise seems to have been a decent enough fellow. (He certainly doesn't come across to be even half the sleazebags Risberg and Gandil seem to have been.)

Now, I'm sure nobody is exactly prepared to call Pete Rose a saint. I'm certainly not calling him a saint. But however much one sympathises with Joe Jackson personally and might condemn Pete Rose as a person, it's not their persons which got them in trouble, it was their actions, to whatever level. And as distasteful a person as Pete Rose can be, it yet remains so that being accused of just betting on your own team (remember: it is proven that Rose was a chronic bookie gambler on sports; it is not proven conclusively that he bet on baseball in general, his team in particular, or both) is something very far short of being accused to trying to fix the outcome of a game which is designed to yield up a winner in fair and unvarnished competition of skill and intelligence.

I assure you that I spoke with regret when I spoke of Fay Vincent; it was only recently that I became aware of much of the detail involving both his mal-handling of the Steve Howe/Yankee situation and that it had been he who pressed Dowd on Ueberroth/Giamatti.

All things considered I would have to say I, too, given the absolute choice, would choose Vincent over Bat-head Bug Selig. But that does seem - sadly enough, given Vincent's intelligence and his genuine love for the game - a bit like having to choose absolutely between Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

[hole_n_one]

Take another look at precisely where adjacent to the plate Fosse was positioned

Yeah.....

Fosse was in Rose's way......Rose put Fosse out of his way.

Baseball!

Since when does a catcher get to creep up the 3rd base line in an attempt to block the plate while not having even tracked the throw home yet?

It's too bad that Fosse became gun shy after that incident, but the play was clean, hard baseball.

I don't understand your tossing in this specific incident in your essay.......this has nothing to do with issues regarding Rose's induction in the HOF.

[BluesDuke]

A City on Fire: The Story of the '68 Detroit Tigers. The true story of a team that helped heal a shattered city. Tuesday, July 30 at 10 pm.

I'm looking forward to watching that one. Especially to see how the great paradox therein is analysed: here was a city shattered enough that the Tigers' winning the Series should have been indeed a huge salve. So what did Detroit do when the Tigers nailed that triumph? They went out and upended the neighbourhood. Again. (Something that repeated itself even more when the Tigers won the big prize in 1984.)

I had the pleasure of visiting old Tiger Stadium for a game while I was traveling in 1998 (the Tigers and the Cincinnati Reds were doing a Negro Leagues tribute night, the Tigers in Detroit Stars uniforms and the Reds, the Kansas City Monarchs, I think they were wearing), and I found the natives to be quite civil and a delight to share a baseball game with. But I didn't have the heart to ask how such a seemingly civil city could break the neighbourhood over a pair of World Series wins.

[BluesDuke]

I find that to be an understatement.

And I find that to be the nicest compliment I have received all week! :)

[WFTR]

But precisely what Billy Dale's treatment by the Clintonistas has to do with Pete Rose's by Giamatti's successors (it wasn't, for one thing, Giamatti or his successors who got Pete Rose in trouble with the tax man, nor did Pete Rose's trouble with the tax man involve his gambling) escapes me for the moment...

The connection is that in your original piece you said that the people would condemn the government if it treated citizens the way that baseball treated Pete Rose. The fact is that the government has treated people much worse than baseball treated Mr. Rose, but the people never condemned the government and specifically Bill Clinton in any meaningful way. I should have written my post more carefully to express that I disagreed with your statement about the people's reaction to unjust government rather than suggesting that you failed to criticize Clinton. For that mistake, I apologize. My point was that "the people's" moral outrage over true injustices is not what it once was. I have mixed feelings about the Pete Rose situation, but even if I supported him completely, I wouldn't look to our current culture to care.

In any case, I thought the article was interesting and well-written overall. Again, it wasn't my intention to be insulting but only to point out how much that one statement struck me as overly optimistic about our society's ability to feel moral outrage over true injustice. Congrats on being able to maintain a career as a professional writer. I like to dabble, but I'll probably never quite make it.

WFTR
Bill

[BluesDuke]

Since when does a catcher get to creep up the 3rd base line in an attempt to block the plate while not having even tracked the throw home yet?

He can creep up the line as far as he likes so far as he is in front of the line, on the infield side of the line, and not on the line itself or its dirt path. As a matter of fact, Rose most likely had the play beaten by a half step at the plate - even using a hook slide, his arriving just ahead of the ball into Fosse's mitt would still have scored that run. Had Fosse been blocking the plate by smothering over it or otherwise covering the plate entirely, rather than being that step or two up and in front of the line, then might Rose have been justified by the rulebook. Bear in mind, always, that just because the rules allow for something does not always mean said something is either advisable or ethical.

It's too bad that Fosse became gun shy after that incident, but the play was clean, hard baseball.

Gun shy? Ray Fosse didn't know the meaning of the word quit. But he had another wounding flaw, as he himself has admitted in the years since: He was one of those players who, for myriad reasons including a reluctance to appear as though he "couldn't take it," waited for his manager to notice he was in particularly bad shape, even if he could barely swing the bat or throw a ball properly. The Indians began the second half of that season in Kansas City, and Fosse took a turn in the batting cage before the game, barely able to swing the bat, and nervous about telling manager Alvin Dark he was in too much pain to play.

Fosse's nickname as an Indian was The Mule. He continued playing despite the shoulder injury, and not until the following spring, when a doctor examined him for back pains, did he realise his shoulder was still in big trouble - broken. The inflammation and swelling from the Rose collision was apparently severe enough that the actual fracture and separation didn't show up in the initial X-rays.

"I obviously was hurt," he told Terry Pluto, author of The Curse of Rocky Colavito: A Loving Look at a Thirty-Year Slump, "but I figured unless the bone was sticking out of the skin, you played. But no one came to me and said, 'Ray, are you hurt? What's wrong, why don't you take some days off?'...But I played through July and August, then I broke my right index finger in early September and my season was over."

Even with only one good arm and his power hitting cut into severely, Fosse still managed to hit .297 somehow for the second half of 1970. He also suffered several rounds of nagging injuries as time went on, usually to his hands or his fingers, not to mention his knees, and did I mention also his shattering several vertebrae in his neck trying to break up a brawl between Bill North and Reggie Jackson during his days with the Oakland Athletics?

The corollary effects of all those - his power hitting was all but erased, and his throwing arm was irreparably compromised - is probably what causes people to presume he was made gun shy by the Rose collision. He bulldogged himself to a seven and a half year career, in fact; you could make a case that, all things considered, he was damn lucky to end up with a .255 career batting average 55 homers from 1970 through his retirement, He had his uses on three straight Oakland pennant winners, but his own mulishness despite the Rose collision is probably the most likely reason Ray Fosse never put up the career he was projected to put up. (There were those who actually considered him in the first half of 1970 better than Thurman Munson, then the comer of the Yankees, and having seen them both play that season it's not entirely farfetched: Fosse was the more talented of the two before the Rose collision.)

I mentioned the Fosse collision and the hitting streak in context of discussing Rose viz ethics and ethics viz Rose, and illustrating the point that when it came to ethics Rose was not always beneath suspicion - in the same context, I mentioned the manner in which he played the hoopla around his passing Ty Cobb as an example of the better side of Rose's on-field ethics. It was a contextual reference. Though, I must confess, baseball writers - whether seasoned and properly aged in soul, or whether aspiring Webziners like yours truly - do tend to digress here and there, but in this instance it was a digression within a certain context.

[Dawgsquat]

I have to say that I have mixed emotions here. Rose was a hero of mine. He disappointed me. I think he should be in the HoF, but I also think that it will diminish the Hall to a certain extent. I don't have an answer so I'll defer to greater baseball minds.

[hole_n_one]

Though, I must confess, baseball writers - whether seasoned and properly aged in soul, or whether aspiring Webziners like yours truly - do tend to digress here and there, but in this instance it was a digression within a certain context.

Nonetheless, even your digressions are gems.

[hole_n_one]

I don't have an answer so I'll defer to greater baseball minds.

That would leave Blues Duke posting to himself.

[Dawgsquat]

LOL! Hey, I said my pitiful little piece!

[BluesDuke]

I don't have an answer so I'll defer to greater baseball minds.

That would leave Blues Duke posting to himself.

Hey, cut that out...you two guys are making me blush! ;)

[Nonstatist]

And as distasteful a person as Pete Rose can be, it yet remains so that being accused of just betting on your own team .. it is not proven conclusively that he bet on baseball in general, his team in particular, or both.. is something very far short of being accused to trying to fix the outcome of a game which is designed to yield up a winner in fair and unvarnished competition of skill and intelligence.

You write very well and I respect your opinion. And I guess you could argue that there are many characters in the Hall with similiar qualities of character. Yet , in some ways I'm nostalgaic; nostalgiac for the days when a rule was a rule and standards of behavior were enforced mercilously. But maybe there never really was such a day, was there (particularly in Baseball )?

[BluesDuke]

Yet , in some ways I'm nostalgaic; nostalgiac for the days when a rule was a rule and standards of behavior were enforced mercilously. But maybe there never really was such a day, was there (particularly in Baseball )?

There may never have been, really, such a day in any organised team sport, never mind baseball. And, for that matter - and this is something too many of today's fans either forget or never really knew - the so-called "good old days" weren't exactly such good old days, in too many ways. Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth may be only the very best known of the old-time baseball stars whose play was as exemplary as their characters were not.

This is perhaps the most compelling reason why we tend, on the rare enough occasions when we find such people, to make such amplified fuss over that creature who is at once a magnificent athlete and an exemplary person; why, for example, Sandy Koufax - who was so much a gentleman that even when he pitched he resorted to a knockdown pitch only when it was imperatively necessary ("Sandy," Allen Barra has written, "preferred to intimidate by domination") - to this day is considered on his own plateau. In case you were curious, Koufax these days works as a free-lance pitching coach - he did work in that capacity for the Dodgers from about 1978-1990 or thereabouts, then became a freelance, though he does work with the Dodgers each spring training. And my understanding is that, though he could command a phenomenal fee for his teaching, he accepts only his basic expenses being paid for each such gig. "I just like to teach," he is quoted as saying.

Koufax apparently was the same way when he did pitch. Don Sutton has been quoted as saying, "A lot of people like to keep everyone else down when they get to the top; Sandy wanted to bring everybody else up there with him." There's another story about Koufax which I found even more telling about the man: in these pre-free agency days, when the minimum rookie salary was $8,000 a year, Koufax was chatting in the Dodger clubhouse with a couple of teammates when he noticed a rookie outfielder named Jim Barbieri in a corner of the clubhouse. This was in 1965, as the pennant race began heating up in earnest. Thinking ahead to the World Series, Koufax, reportedly, said without provocation, and indicating Barbieri, "You know, if I can just keep pitching the way I'm supposed to pitch, I can double that man's income."

I suppose a lot of it is a human level version of the old saw that a plane crash is news but the millions of safe flights from takeoff to landing are routine. We're so accustomed now to learning the most scandalous among professioal athletes that we could follow a particular player his entire career and not know how basically decent he was as a person even as he was good or great as a player, unless he's playing in a high-media region. We know, for example, that Derek Jeter of the Yankees and Al Leiter of the Mets are as decent as people as they are as baseball players. But now think of someone like Curt Schilling, the Arizona pitcher - it's only in the last couple of seasons, even though he has been a front-line pitcher for over a decade, that we've begun to learn that Schilling the man is at least as good and probably better than Schilling the prospective Hall of Fame pitcher.