Pete Rose SHOULD be in the Hall...

Monday, December 10, 2012

Holly left for Omaha on business so I used the opportunity to have a guys night and watch another episode of the Ken Burns’ baseball documentary.  Don and John joined me for spaghetti and smoothies as we enjoyed the Ninth and final inning of the original production.  It would take us through Major League Baseball in the 70’s and 80’s, a time that we knew well.  It was the time of free agency and the beginning of the understanding that pro athletes were not icons and home town heroes, but mercenaries, drug users and sometimes cheaters.  In other words, they were just like the rest of us.

Pete Rose was one of the greatest players of this era and seemingly a throwback to an earlier era when players through everything they had into every single game and always came away with a couple of hits, a dirty uniform, and were only happy if they’d won.  Rose would go on to surpass Ty Cobb’s record for most hits in a career, finishing with 4,256 and certain enshrinement in baseball’s Hall of Fame.  He retired to become the manager of the Cincinnati Reds and it was then that allegations began to surface of his gambling addiction, which appeared to include major league baseball and included games in which he’d played.  If true, he would be banned from baseball and never win entry into the Hall.  Three years after his retirement, he agreed to a ban from baseball for the gambling allegations, but continued to deny betting on baseball and his Reds until 2004, though he claimed to have always bet ON himself.  The Hall of Fame continues to uphold the ban against his entry despite tremendous criticism by baseball fans around the country...including me.

I understand his banishment from baseball.  He knew the consequences of his gambling in this regard while he was doing it and accepted the risk.  He had an addiction that needed treatment, for sure, but that does not excuse breaking that long held rule.  Banishment from the Hall of Fame is a separate matter.  The Hall was designed to recognize achievements by players for what they did between the foul lines and not how they lived their lives once the games were played.  There are many scoundrels in the Hall of Fame...baseball players were no better the general population from which they came...but we allow and forgive the transgressions we knew and bury our heads over those that happened, but went unreported by a media that protected its sports heroes through the sixties.  Pete Rose was one of the greatest players ever to put on a uniform.  He ALWAYS played to win.  His nickname, Charlie Hustle, was as well earned as a nickname can be.  The gambling he did was wrong, but it never detracted from how he played or what he accomplished on the field.  He belongs in the Hall.

I conceded another day of exercise to a worsening chest cold.  If it continues, I’ll simply climb aboard the trainer and put in some time indoors.  I suppose I was being a little easy on myself, but there it is.