Writer Kostya Kennedy recently penned a very interesting article on Pete Rose for Sports Illustrated. It's now 25 years, a quarter century, that Rose has been banned from baseball, keeping him ineligible for the Hall of Fame. Should his exile continue -- perhaps forever -- or is it time to let bygones be bygones and finally welcome him back? Let's take a look back at basically what happened.
It was certainly no secret Rose liked to gamble, even during his playing days. In and of itself, there's nothing wrong with that. It's legal and lots of players from different sports visited casinos to take their chances. Still do.
A big issue was whether Rose bet on baseball itself. Back in those days, the establishment of Major League Baseball regarded anybody (particularly one of their own) placing wagers on their sacred games in somewhat the same fashion as Joe McCarthy did when he went after the "commie sympathizers" back in the 1950s. Let's just say they were paranoid.
In hindsight, of course, most of this was nothing more than nonsense. Propaganda foisted upon a gullible public in an attempt to whip them into a frenzy, all under false pretenses orchestrated by people in power for their own continued benefit. BTW, look around. A lot of that is still going on these days too.
A baseball player or manager betting on a game, even back then, shouldn't have been a big deal -- unless they were in a position to affect the outcome of that particular game. In other words, if a guy plays for Team A, but he bets on a game between Team B and Team C, over which he has no possible influence, then no harm, and no foul. It's just a bet. Yet ever since the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal -- almost a century ago! -- MLB will get their bowels in an uproar over the slightest hint of anything involving gambling. (It should be noted that when the evidence finally all came out -- Shoeless Joe Jackson was officially exonerated of any wrong-doing, and Joe professed his innocence until the day he died in 1951 -- but he remains banned from his rightful place in the Hall of Fame to this day. Make of that what you will.)
But in Rose's case, the kicker was him betting on his own team, while he was the manager of the Cincinnati Reds back in 80s. What was worse was he denied it for a long time. He lied. As the evidence continued to trickle out, it eventually became apparent that Rose had indeed bet on his team. He was hit, no pun intended.
Thing is, when all was said and done, it also became apparent that Rose only ever bet on his team to win. Had he bet on them to lose, this would have been a whole different can of nefarious worms. But he didn't.
Nevertheless, there are those that say that even if Pete was betting on his team to win any particular game, he might still have abused his managerial authority for his immediate financial gain, at the detriment of the team in the long run.
How so? Like Kennedy said in the SI article, maybe he would overwork a particularly hot relief pitcher that needed rest to win a certain game. An interesting theory, and entirely possible.
But as Kennedy further pointed out, even a relief pitcher himself in that situation at the time, one Rob Murphy, a left-hander, refuted such a notion. Though making the most appearances of any reliever over the 1987 and 1988 seasons (163, which equates to about every other game), Murphy obviously saw things otherwise.
According to Murphy -- "The idea that Pete might have overused me or overused some other pitcher I was in the pen with, I never saw that at all. I'd just about say it was a ridiculous idea. If anything, I wanted to pitch even more times than I got in".
So what does all that add up to? While betting on his team -- only to win -- his own players at the time say he did nothing out of the ordinary as a manager. And if there's ever been anyone in the entire world of sports that was driven to win more than Pete Rose -- yours truly is certainly open to suggestions.
But yes, Pete was dead wrong when he lied about it. However, MLB ran a scam on him as well. If only he would finally fess up, they said, it would be taken under consideration. He did, and they gave him a life sentence anyway. If Rose had continued to lie and stonewall, he couldn't possibly have wound up worse off.
So 25 years later, here we are. The all-time hits leader in the history of the game is still denied induction into the Hall of Fame. Is that right for what he did or didn't do? Opinions certainly vary.
The majority of the public wants Rose to get his plaque in Cooperstown -- as do most MLB players -- from Rose's time to the present. Yet there remain baseball "purists" that still object on "principle". Besides the league itself, for the most part these are "old schoolers", particularly baseball writers, who will forever cling to the notion that baseball should be a chaste, innocent, virginesque type of game. These are the same folks that overwhelming elected Gaylord Perry, the reputed master of the spitball, to the Hall of Fame. Along with a boatload of drunks and adulterers. Ty Cobb was known to be a very mean-spirited sort of guy, and allegedly once even killed a man, but while Rose surpassed Cobb's decades old hit total -- alas -- he bet on his team to win. Guess who's in the Hall and who's not? Am I the only one that sees something seriously wrong with this picture?
Take all this in the context of baseball's infamous "steroid era", which was beginning just about the same time Rose was hanging up his spikes. Once sacred stats, such as Hank Aaron's career HR total and Roger Maris' one year mark were not only broken, but obliterated. People like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, who would otherwise have been slam-dunks into the Hall of Fame may or may not ever get there (though neither has ever been found officially guilty of substance abuse -- but that's a column for another day). In the meantime, Pete Rose has twisted in the wind for 25 years. Only recently, since the PED mania has died down, is his "case" finally being reviewed. Well, it's about time.
As Kennedy said, Rose was banished for the incalculable damage he MIGHT have done to the foundation of the game. Steroid users are reviled for the damage they actually did.
There's a difference.
A big one.
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