Posted on 02/27/2020 4:29:07 AM PST by Kaslin
I’m a big fan of accountability – if you break the rules there has to be consequences, or else there are no rules. But I’m also for sanity and proportional punishment, which is why I think it’s time (well past, to be honest) to lift the lifetime ban on Pete Rose and allow him into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Pete Rose bet on baseball, he also lied about it when caught. All of this is well known and not irrelevant, but the price for that has been paid.
Rose is baseball’s hit king, slapping out 67 more hits and Ty Cobb and 1,000 more than the nearest active player. By any unit of measure, Pete is a hall of famer. Yet he remains on the outside looking in.
Last week, Rose applied, once again, for reinstatement. Given the fact that no one from the steroid era or the recent electronic sign stealing scandals has been banned for life, he has a strong logical case for lifting the ban. But baseball is a private business, free to set its own rules and standards, so there is no guarantee of anything.
Lawyers for Rose, in filing their latest petition, correctly noted, “Given the manner in which Major League Baseball has treated and continues to treat other egregious assaults on the integrity of the game, Mr. Rose’s ongoing punishment is no longer justifiable as a proportional response to his transgressions.”
None of this is to diminish what Rose did, it was against the rules and threatened the integrity of the game. But he did it decades ago, a life sentence for one of the greats is cruel and unusual.
Rose hasn’t helped his case by changing his story and monetizing his infamy with “I’m sorry I bet on baseball” signed balls, but if character were a factor in enshrinement in the hall, the hall would be nearly empty.
What happens on the field should be all that matters – individual performance. The Halls of Fame are not about team or world championships, they are about individual achievements, and Rose holds a record unlikely to be broken, at least for decades. How baseball can justify is exclusion for life seems more personal than anything else.
By many accounts, Rose isn’t the easiest person to get along with and can be difficult to be around. So what?
Babe Ruth chased women, couldn’t be bothered to remember anyone’s name, was perpetually late for games, ate and drank too much, along with all manner of other traits that would make him the last person you’d trust to feed your dog while on vacation, let alone think worthy of celebration. But he hit the hell out of the ball.
Mickey Mantle worked as a casino greeter for a time in retirement and was banned. Mantle did it to make money to cover the cost of cancer treatment for his son, yet baseball banned him anyway. I question the wisdom of this, not the authority. Once he both left the casino job he was reinstated and all was forgiven. The punishment, dumb and heartless as it was, fit the so-called crime.
Rose has been barred since 1989. Surely 31 years is enough.
At age 78, and speaking honestly, Pete Rose isn’t going to be around much longer. To deny him something he’s clearly earned, not through stealing signs or taking performance enhancing drugs, can only be attributed to spite at this point.
The Hall of Fame itself could ignore the ban and allow Rose’s name on the ballot, but the last time Rose appealed for reinstatement (and was denied), in 2016, they said they’d abide by whatever the wishes of Major League Baseball were. No one wants to step up and give the man his due.
Given how the bar has been lowered for entry to the Hall of Fame (I don’t want to name names because they were all good players, just not great), it’s high time they allow someone who clearly and unequivocally clears the bar of greatness as a player.
There is no more line for enshrinement. It used to be 3,000 hits, 500 home-runs, 300 wins for pitchers, or other milestones were needed to guarantee entry. Those standards aren’t reached anymore, at least not very often. So lesser players now make the cut. But 4,256 hits is a number greater than the average player with a good career will amass in games played and it deserves recognition.
Pete Rose will likely never win a spot in the Off-The-Field Hall of Fame, but there is no doubt he earned one in baseball for what he did between the first and third base lines. And he should get it while he’s alive; he earned it. It’s time for Major League Baseball to step-up and stop blocking him from the space he truly deserves.
“And the day after he dies is when he should be enshrined. Not a day before.”
I agree with that. He will get into the hall of fame, but will not live to see it. Fitting...
Do you really think Drew Brees is the greatest NFL quarterback of all time? LOL.
No it isn’t. Unless they give Lance Armstrong his seven TdF wins back.
More ignorance. Courts don't proclaim anyone innocent; they declare a person "not guilty." O.J. Simpson is a case in point.
ML/NJ
...EXCEPT Pete Rose.
It goes beyond that. Cobb played in an era when all team travel was by train, all games were played during the daytime, fielding gloves were like mittens compared to the gloves of the 1960s, some stadia did not even have outfield fences, just a rope to distinguish the furthest boundaries of the outfield. Training was much different between Cobb's time and Rose's time. It blurs to the point that you can't distinguish who had an easier path to 4000 hits.
oh geez...
Just say no to Pete.
Just say no to Joe too. Once you get past the puff piece “Eight Men Out” and read the base documents, which are available, you see that as sympathetic a figure as he makes, he took the money.
I believe there is more at issue here than Rose’s gambling. When I was a kid, I absolutely hated Pete Rose. I didn’t like his attitude, his small ball play, his hustle over natural athletic ability. That is until he left Cincinnati and came to Philadelphia. (I grew up in suburban Philadelphia) It took a while to love him, but he became mine. I suspect there are many outside of Cincinnati and Philadelphia who just don’t like Rose, gambling or no gambling, although that is an aging population.
A lying, child-raping cheater?
No thanks.
Cobb had a LIFETIME batting average of .367. That’s one of the most astonishing MLB records of all time.
I belong to a “Lost Ballparks” group on Facebook and it is interesting to read about and see photos of places like Crosley, Connie Mack (Shibe), Forbes, Sportsman’s, and others that were replaced by about 1970 because they were getting older and smaller and some (like Connie Mack in particular) were in neighbourhoods that were getting crummy and run down and dangerous to be in.
It seems though that the newer (”multipurpose”) ballparks with the Astroturf and built on land that used to be out in the countryside only a few years earlier took away some important things about how the game used to be played and watched (kind of like how helmets in the NHL detracted from the game in terms of player visibility and fan identification and encouraging more careless and deliberate behaviour with stickwork related offences from the players).
I agree many of “hits” were BS Astro turf squibbers
“There’s no crying in baseball.”
True dat
What about “Shoeless Joe” Jackson?
I lived in Ohio at the time. They had the logs from his bookie. Never bet against the Reds based on the evidence presented by the prosecutor.
Absolutely agree! His record(s) were made on the field as a player without drugs or an ancillary help! It was done on pure "hustle"!
What he did as a manager? Eh! At least he bet on HIS team!
“ I’m going to assume you’re related to Pete Rose ... because nobody could be that freaking ignorant when it comes to sports.”
I guess you can’t read. Never said the best passer was the best QB. Just like the best putter is not necessarily the best golfer. There are many aspects of every sport. Pete has the most hits. Does not make him the home run king, steal king, strike out king. But it makes him the hit king. Is that really too hard for you to understand.
im from Detroit...and i still pissed about Tiger Stadium. The last game there in 1999, people came from across the country to witness that. Almost everyone one of em said “i cant you people are gonna tear this down?...add insult to injury, they replaced it with a monstrosity Comerica Park. Mike Illitch was a great owner, but man, he built the tackiest baseball stadium ever seen...especially from the outside. It looks like it was never finished...giant baseball bats..plastic tiger heads with plastic light up balls in their mouth. A big ferris wheel with “baseball seats”, they actually charge little kids 2 bucks to ride. The players absolutely hate it...it faces directly into the sun, no shade anywhere. After only one season, they had to reconfigure the outfield..it was designed so poorly.
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