The Return of Pete Rose(Exclusive--He's Back in Baseball in 2004)

Pete Rose and Major League Baseball have reached an agreement that would allow him to return to baseball in 2004, and includes no admission of wrongdoing by Rose, Baseball Prospectus has learned. According to several sources, Rose signed the agreement after a series of pre-season meetings between Rose, Hall of Fame member Mike Schmidt, and at different times, high-level representatives of Major League Baseball, including Bob DuPuy, Major League Baseball's Chief Operating Officer, and Allan H. "Bud" Selig, Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

The agreement includes removal of Rose from baseball's permanently ineligible list. This would allow Rose to appear on ballots for baseball's Hall of Fame, which bars such banned players from consideration. The agreement allows Rose to be employed by a team in the 2004 season, as long as that position does not involve the day to day operations. That employment restriction would be removed after a year, allowing Rose to return to managing a team as early as the 2005 season if a position is offered to him.

In December, several publications reported that Rose and Bud Selig met in Milwaukee last winter, and that lawyers for both sides were exchanging proposals to end Rose's lifetime ban from baseball. Jayson Stark of ESPN wrote in a column August 7th that Reds owner Carl Lindner intends to hire Rose as the team's manager and has agitated for Rose's reinstatement for some time.

Pete Rose has been banned from baseball since he reached an agreement with then-Commissioner Bart Giamatti that included a lifetime ban from baseball for conduct detrimental to the sport, but which did not include an admission that Rose gambled on baseball. The August 23, 1989 agreement ended the investigation by baseball, led by John Dowd. Dowd's findings are published at www.dowdreport.com. Dowd concluded that Rose had bet on games he was involved in, citing such evidence as telephone records including calls to a bookie from the Reds clubhouse, bank records of large payments, and betting notes that handwriting experts identified as Rose's, which matched records of bookie Ron Peters. Baseball Prospectus has published several articles on the continuing controversy over Rose, including a lengthy evaluation of baseball historian and Boston Red Sox analyst Bill James's criticisms of the Dowd Report. Rose has always denied that he has bet on baseball.

The agreement would secure a place on the Hall of Fame ballot for Rose as his eligibility window closes. Rose played his last season in 1986, and Hall of Fame eligibility rules require that a player appear within 20 years of the end of their playing career. There would be significant barriers to Rose appearing on the 2004 ballot, which would leave only one year of eligibility for election by voters at large. If Rose failed to be elected by a vote, he would have to be selected by the Veterans' Committee.

What would be his incentive to lose games where he stood to gain no money for doing so?

Well, you could do something short-term in a game you had money on that would hurt your team long-term. Like overusing a relief pitcher and burning out his arm. Or keeping a starting pitcher in for much longer than the pitch count would dictate, in order to win that game (again, risking your team's performance down the road). You win the game you have money on and lose games later in the season.

That's only one reason why gambling is prohibited no matter WHO you're betting on.

The other, more important reason gambling is prohibited, is that most gamblers lose money (11-10 odds, etc). If you're in debt to gamblers and are in position to influence the outcome of an event which gamblers bet on, you're compromised. It's very easy for a gambler to say "we'll forgive you that $50,000 debt if you help us out here a bit". That's why there's a zero tolerance policy on gambling in all professional sports, because it can lead to corruption.

You ought to take a look around the league. Baseball fans are still showing up to see the games. In fact, they are packing the house as they always have.

Please humor me and list some examples of MLB "cramming for any kind of good PR it can get right now." I just don't see the desperation you do.

The bad publicity that baseball receives -- Sammy Sosa and the corked bat incident, for example -- is certainly no worse than say, Alan Iverson and his off-court thuggery. It seemed people wanted to form a posse to go find and hang Sosa after this incident. I wish people would get that excited when they see an Iverson or a Spreewell doing what they do.

I am getting tired of people who constantly berate the game of baseball and the athletes who play the sport, especially when those athletes of the NBA, NFL and other professional sports leagues are no better, and certainly not any less wealthy.

It's not that he has an incentive to lose games, it's that he has an incentive to win games, which means he sacrafices the others by doing dumb things from a season point that are good from a game point. Kinda like using your best starting pitcher for 1 inning in relief in the last game of the World Series, when he's not pitching again for months. Except that Rose did that kind of thing during the season, when he had bet on his team.

Former Padres manager and MLB player Kevin Kennedy (who now does baseball analysis for Fox Sports West) was coaching in the Reds minor league organization during the Rose betting days. He said he would read the box scores every night, to keep up on the team, and try to learn things about managing from Rose. He constantly scratched his head wondering what the H@ll Rose was thinking - until he heard about the betting rumors, and for him, it all fell together. Rose was doing ANYTHING to win the games he bet on, at the expense of the other games that he didn't bet on. That constitutes game fixing - the WORST thing for the integrity of the game.

To see Rose constantly insert himself into the limelight in a vain attempt to get reinstated and Hall-of-Famed shows how frustrated and self-centered he is, and how a lifetime ban is so fitting for such a "Clintonesque" creature.

Too much focus on Pete Rose while others go unnoticed...

Deborah Kendrick - July 20, 2003

Deaf ballplayer 'Dummy' Hoy succeeded on and off field

His life, all 99 1/2 years of it, tells perhaps one of the most classically American stories any of us have heard in a long time.

William "Dummy" Hoy, deaf since age 3, was outside his Houcktown, Ohio, cobbler shop, as was his custom so many afternoons, throwing and chasing balls with the children of the town. A passer-by, recognizing his talent, invited him to come play a game with Findlay's baseball team in a town 12 miles away.

Before long, Hoy was heading for Wisconsin in search of serious ball playing, promising his mother he'd be back in time to help fill fall shoe orders.

The first deaf baseball player to play in the major leagues, Hoy played for several teams from 1886-1902 but had his longest stint with the Cincinnati Reds. Reds fans adored him, and he loved Cincinnati so much that he settled here with his wife and six children, buying a 60-acre dairy farm in Mount Healthy.

He played 1,792 major league games, batted .288, had 2,054 hits and 597 stolen bases, and was the first outfielder to throw three runners out at the plate in the same game. In his earlier games, his success was particularly impressive because all calls were verbal, never heard by Hoy. In Oshkosh, Wis., early in his professional career, he asked a third-base coach to signal strikes and balls. That accommodation led to the signs flashed in the game today.

Hoy was a magnificent human being, as well. His friendliness and love of children led to discovery of his athletic gift in the first place, and his work ethic fostered not only a remarkable baseball career but success as a dairy farmer, personnel director of several hundred deaf workers for Goodyear, and achievement in a variety of other jobs.

Stories are plentiful of his walking 72 blocks from Mount Healthy to see his son, Judge Carson Hoy, preside in court; of dancing the Charleston in his 80s, and pruning trees in his 90s. Although the term might be considered offensive today, "Dummy" was the name Hoy preferred, correcting new acquaintances who thought it would be more courteous to call him William.

In 1951, Hoy was unanimously voted the first athlete inducted into the American Athletic Association of the Deaf's Hall of Fame. In 1961, he threw out the first pitch for a World Series game in Crosley Field. Two months later, just five months shy of his 100th birthday, he died in his sleep. Despite lobbying on his behalf during his lifetime and since, he has not yet been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

At noon on Aug. 3, preceding the Reds-Giants game, Hoy will be inducted into the Reds Hall of Fame. In honor of the magnificent player whose first language was American Sign Language, the game (for the first time in Reds history) will provide both American Sign Language interpreters and closed captioning.

As Jeff Carroll, advocacy and education specialist for Cincinnati's Community Services for the Deaf, says he and about 50 more deaf people have tickets for the event. "Dummy Hoy was very active in the Cincinnati Deaf Club and a strong supporter of the community," Carroll says.

"Plenty of deaf people, including myself, are Reds fans and Hoy fans, and feel this recognition is seriously long overdue."

Find more at http://www.dummyhoy.com

Freepers,
Throw your support and have this man inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown... any and all help is appreciated.

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