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.
Unless it was the 1978 team, Pete Rose wouldn't be on it. He signed as a free agent with the Phillies in 1979.
You assume they got the logs from all his bookies, and said logs are accurate beyond reproach? Meanwhile, Pete is a serial liar who broke the one big rule, the only 1 infraction life time ban rule in ALL of American sport. Screw im.
I just can’t picture a degenerate gambler betting everyday invariably on the same team for the exact same $$$. That stretches the bounds of credulity for me. But say it’s the way he did it. How does he manage the games he plays against teams he is going to bet after they play his team? Say you know a team is lousy but has a great pen. Do you try to wear their pen out with a better line up/pinch hitters or go easy on them so they have a fresh pen for the next series they play?
Freegards
Must have been it, then. Vic Correll is this guy’s name.
PED guys have an interesting situation though. For most of MLB’s “steroid era” they weren’t actually against the rule, the PA blocked it. The first time they made PEDs against the rules there was no testing and no punishment schedule, so not REALLY against the rules. I think McGuire and Sosa were out of the league by the time roids really and truly became against MLB rules with testing and punishment. Can you really ban guys from the Hall for doing something that wasn’t even against the rules? Not to mention that there is the “steroid era”, it is a part of baseball history, you can’t really tell the story of the game without it.
And no I don’t think A-Rod will get voted in. Too many people thought he was going to “rescue” the home run records from steroid cheat Bonds, only for A-Rod to get busted. There was a lot of sadness around the game that day.
Every Major League clubhouse has a sign that says there is no gambling on the game. Pete Rose broke the cardinal rule. He was a great player, one of the best, but he should not be in the Hall of Fame.
Actually, Vic's an asshole, too. He got too big for his britches, became a free agent, and nobody wanted him, because he had a well-deserved reputation for being very difficult to deal with.
Let him in the HOF, but put his plaque in the basement, by the boiler, and you need to get special permission to go down and see it.
We all have our opinions. Pete is arrogant. The Reds were pretty good at the time. I think he expected them to win more often than not. JMHO
Ah a simulation of Hades!
It might have happened a long time ago, but Pete has a way of defeating himself. For some insane reason he was made a commentator on one of the networks covering the playoffs a few years ago and he was an egomaniacal blowhard who I never want to hear from again. Very irritating. He's probably his own worst enemy.
I think Rose is actually more well known and his accomplishments more famous because he’s not in the hall. It created a lot of discussions about Rose over the years.
Betting the same bet the same way for the same amount is not how most gambler’s get their enjoyment from sports betting, at least in my observation. My point is that a manager betting on baseball has an opportunity to affect teams after his team plays them, at least for the next series or so.
Freegards
IMO putting Jackson in the HOF is an easier call than Pete Rose. Shoeless Joe was acquitted in a court of law for conspiring to fix the 1919 World Series. Pete Rose agreed to the ban as part of his settlement to keep from really getting nailed. His petitions to get the ban that he agreed to lifted seem incredibly unrepentant and should rightfully be ignored. Very similar to Charles Manson's parole hearings - the board should ask "why are you wasting our time?"
No. He gambled, he gambled on his own team.
No means no.
I’m wondering if some of those PED guys will eventually get in — especially Bonds, Clemens and A-Rod. Those three would have been Hall of Famers even if PEDs didn’t exist. That’s probably not the case with any of the others.
I think so. MLB has the weird eligibility ceiling though, so it could get strange. IMHO the right answer is for the Hall to commit to a “steroid era” section, and have a vote that’s just players where voters are specifically instructed to ignore the steroid issue. If you take the position that the Hall is about telling the story of the sport you can’t tell the story of baseball without talking about that era. Especially because they weren’t against the rules for so long. You have to include that issue and the players in it.
I was in a small conference(for lack of a better word) with Manfred two years ago. He said many interesting things, mostly about mathematics, algorithms and the time clock. He also said that one of the very first things considered was to let Rose back in so he would not have to hear about all his term. Then he looked at the file - nope, not going to happen.
So, we can safely speculate and make all kinds of inferences, but lacking those “difficult” measurements they remain utterly without factual foundation. Yet a study quantifying the differences, if any, would be both possible and valuable. A doctoral thesis or a sabermetric book awaits the Voros McCracken willing to look past conventional wisdom, what “everyone knows,” to reality.
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