If Rose is going to be left out then we need to deduct Cobb and Speaker from the HOF....
Long Before Pete Rose, Hall-of-Famers Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker Bet on Baseball Games
December 15, 1925: Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis allows Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker to remain in baseball despite evidence of gambling
LANDIS MIGHT HAVE BEEN BLACKMAILED.
After retiring in 1925, former Detroit Tigers’ pitcher Dutch Leonard went to American League President Ban Johnson and presented him with letters indicating that Ty Cobb, the Tigers’ player-manager, and Tris Speaker of the Cleveland Indians, had fixed a late-season game between the two clubs. Detroit won, allowing the Tigers to finish third and quality for World Series money. Leonard also charged that Cobb and Speaker bet on games in the 1919 Black Sox World Series.
With the Black Sox scandal just a few years removed, Johnson deemed the documents so potentially-damaging to baseball he paid Leonard $20,000 to suppress them.
When Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis heard about the cover up, he forced Johnson out of office and made Leonard’s documents public. But after a hearing, Landis ruled that Cobb and Speaker could remain in baseball because of lack of evidence - huh?.
This is the same Landis who threw Chicago White Sox third baseman Buck Weaver out of baseball for life because he had knowledge of the 1919 World Series fix, and while he didn’t participate in throwing games, he didn’t inform officials either.
Perhaps Landis spared Cobb because they both came from Georgia and were close friends or maybe because, as Cobb later claimed, attorneys brokered a deal with Landis (blackmail) that if he and Speaker were banned, they would expose gambling so widespread it would destroy baseball.
Love or Hate Pete...he was that great! As far as anyone knows he didn’t cheat, like steroid users did...Let him in!