How can hypocritical Hall of Fame keep Pete Rose waiting for life?
Commissioner will not agree to lift life ban from baseball - and fair enough - but he deserves his place in Cooperstown
For more than 26 years Pete Rose has, apparently, been a tragic figure after being permanently banned by Major League Baseball in 1989 for betting on his team’s games while managing the Cincinnati Reds. His records are in the Hall of Fame but Rose is not.
He has played more games (3,562), has more career at bats (14,053), to go along with most career hits (4,256), as well as more career outs (10,328), than anyone who has ever played the game. Well, make that 10,329 outs now as the final out of Rose’s career looks to be permanent.
Commissioner Rob Manfred announced this past week that despite Rose’s recent request for reinstatement he will not lift the lifetime ban. And that should be that. Rose will be 75 next April and the recently appointed Manfred would have little reason to review his decision any time soon.
The Hall of Fame is actually a hall of artefacts. It’s all about history and no American sport has a more bittersweet history than baseball starting at the very top
Manfred also said that while Rose was banned from working or participating in anything related to MLB, it did not preclude him from being voted into the Hall of Fame because that is an entirely separate entity. Of course, the Hall of Fame passed a resolution not long after Rose’s banishment that anyone who is on baseball’s ineligible list is also ineligible for the hall.
All of this brings us back to the tragic figure that is Rose. Pundits have belaboured the term while opining that the man known as “Charlie Hustle”, for the reckless and joyful passion with which he played the game, had it all before, tragically, succumbing to his mortal vices.
And this is a tragedy? Sad, perhaps, but far more tragic is the hypocrisy surrounding the guardians of the game. Manfred was correct in upholding Rose’s ban according to baseball’s Rule 21 which states: “Any player, umpire, or club or league official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.”
Fair enough because the only thing that has endured in baseball over the past 150 years is the competition itself. Compromise that and you deserve to go and Rose most certainly is guilty of that. But the Hall of Fame is actually a hall of artefacts. It’s all about history and no American sport has a more bittersweet history than baseball starting at the very top.
Part of his integrity, presumably, was keeping the game white. It was Landis who steadfastly refused to allow blacks to play in the major leagues because he felt whites would not pay to see a black player. Three years after Landis died in office Jackie Robinson finally broke the colour barrier. Landis apologists say his segregation views merely made him a man of his times.
Well, Rose was a man of his times as well. In 1979, he became the highest paid athlete in team sports when he signed a four-year contract with the Philadelphia Phillies for US$3.2 million. Today, that is roughly a month’s pay for some top-end players. Rose was a generation away from the big money so he really became Charlie Hustle by signing and selling anything he could.
He makes about US$1 million just for signing his name now, an unseemly pastime according to the lords of baseball. Rose was told by then commissioner Bart Giamatti to change his behaviour and make amends and who knows, someday he might get back in the game.
Rose lives in Las Vegas, where he still bets on baseball and unabashedly shills anything he can. Perhaps if he resided in a docile Cincinnati suburb, stopped gambling and opened a flower shop he would seem suitable for reinstatement in baseball and take his place in the Hall of Fame next to the likes of Landis and a few other similarly odious human beings enshrined in Cooperstown. But the Hall of Fame has a morals clause so no Rose.
Rose once said he would walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball. He might have added that he would crawl over a mile of broken glass as well if there was a dollar bill at the other end. He is undoubtedly crude, unrepentant and flawed. But, at the very least, Rose knows exactly who he is. The Hall of Fame has absolutely no idea what it is and that is truly tragic.
