As it should be, Rose may now reach baseball's Hall before the fraudsters
I’ve thought about it.
The more I do, I’m mostly just happy Pete Rose finally gets a crack at Cooperstown.
Cooperstown is a village in central New York State, also home to baseball’s Hall of Fame, a fact once known by everybody just as sure as the Yankees played in New York and the Dodgers in Los Angeles.
Though he infuriates me frequently, I’m not furious Donald Trump’s insistence Rose, who died last September at 83, come off Major League Baseball’s banned list may have played a role, nor that the selection of Pope Leo XIV, a verified White Sox fan, may have influenced the decision, because not only is Rose now eligible for the Hall, but so, too, is Shoeless Joe Jackson and the rest of the White Sox banned from the game after taking money from gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series.
I’m not particularly bothered how dumb commissioner Rob Manfred, who announced the policy change on Tuesday, appears in the face of a new paradigm that removes the permanently banned upon their deaths, as though what they did not deserve in life they magically might once in the ground, which is not only ridiculous but cruel to the families and fans of those figures.
Nope, I’m mostly just happy Rose might finally get where his playing career should have always taken him and, now that I think about it, that it will be left to future selectors to decide which sins against the game might be forgiven and which may not.
Rose, you may recall, was found to have bet on baseball as manager of the Cincinnati Reds, the team for whom he played 19 of his 25 seasons as a player, twice leading “The Big Red Machine” to World Series crowns.
He swore he did not bet on the game, yet agreed to his 1989 banishment nonetheless, perhaps to stop ongoing investigations in their tracks.
In 1991, baseball ruled those on the banned list to be ineligible for Hall of Fame consideration — “The Pete Rose Rule” — leaving Rose’s case to rage ever since.
Gambling on the game, as decreed by the game, had been baseball’s unpardonable sin ever since the afforementioned “Black Sox” scandal, which threw Shoeless Joe and others out of the game and ushered Kennesaw Mountain Landis, a still active federal judge, into the commissioner’s chair in 1920.
Full disclosure?
I loved Rose.
I loved the Reds.
I devoured the 1975 World Series as a 7-year-old and as a little leaguer tried to hustle like Rose, catch like Johnny Bench, flap and keep my elbow high in the batter’s box like Joe Morgan, hit home runs like George Foster.
In my lifetime, I can think of three athletes in their primes who were more famous in this country than Rose and they’re Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and that’s it.
Reggie Jackson was close.
Bird and Magic might have been, too.
LeBron James? Tom Brady?
Please.
Baseball was king and Rose soared for a reason.
Nobody, nobody, nobody played as hard as he did. Nobody captured the imagination like he did. Nobody dove into third base like he did.
Nobody else earned his nickname, Charlie Hustle.
He took out and injured Cleveland catcher Ray Fosse at the 1970 All-Star Game and, though unfortunate, nobody questioned it because there was a way to play the game, Rose embodied it and that was just that.
Rose played by a code and had a presence.
Though a singles hitter, he was breathtaking.
Then there are the numbers.
He became MLB’s all-time hits leader with 4,256, clocked 200 hits 10 different seasons, led the league in hitting three times, was an All-Star 17 times, collected hits in 44 consecutive games when he was 37 years old, did not miss a game eight different seasons, once played in 745 straight games.
He also played in more games, period, than any other player (3,562) and came to the plate more times than any other player (15, 890).
He committed the game’s unpardonable sin and got kicked out for it, but he did not cheat the game, commit fraud upon the game, nor break the trust of so many of us who love, love, love the game.
Barry Bonds did that.
Mark McGwire did that.
Sammy Sosa did that.
Roger Clemens did that.
Alex Rodriguez did that.
Rafael Palmeiro did that.
Those guys were never banned from the game nor the Hall of the Fame. They just haven’t been voted in.
Rose had the votes but never got a vote.
Now that can be remedied.
Justice will be Rose getting in before Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Clemens, Rodriguez and Palmeiro.
Let them in if you want afterward but I still wouldn’t.
I’m mostly just happy Pete Rose finally gets a crack at Cooperstown.
Got to disagree Clay. Pete was banned rightfully so in my opinion because he bet on baseball. Shoeless Joe was just a stupid, practically illiterate, country boy without a friend in the White House.
Bart Giamatti has turned over in his grave.