Baseball makes correct decision on Pete Rose
As we’ve seen countless times in the wide world of sports, great talent and great character don’t always go hand in hand.
Sometimes, you get a person like Roberto Clemente, who was one of the best of all time on the field and a wonderful humanitarian away from the baseball diamond. Then, other times, you get someone like Barry Bonds, also an all-time great between the lines, but a fairly despicable human being, in general. Many players are hated by the opposition, but Bonds was despised by his own teammates.
Pete Rose is a guy who is much closer to Bonds than Clemente. He is, as he’s not reluctant to tell people, the “Hit King.” In 1985, Rose broke the major-league record for hits that was held since Ty Cobb’s retirement in 1928. He began managing the Cincinnati Reds in the mid-1980s, and during that time was gambling on baseball – always on his own team, he later claimed. Nevertheless, the ban on major-league players gambling on the game in any fashion is longstanding and perfectly clear.
Following an investigation, Rose accepted a lifetime ban but refused to own up to the gambling allegations. Finally, in 2004, he came clean to some degree and, beginning a few years after that, began pressing Major League Baseball’s leaders for a reconsideration of his exile.
Rose had zero luck with Bud Selig, commissioner from 1998 until earlier this year. Selig met with Rose in 2002 but never issued any decision. Selig was replaced by Rob Manfred, who sat down with Rose in September. On Monday, Rose heard Manfred’s answer, and it wasn’t what he was hoping for.
To the surprise of no one who follows the situation, Manfred said Rose has never been fully honest about his gambling, that he continues to gamble on the game and that there’s evidence he was betting on baseball even before his playing career ended.
“Mr. Rose’s public and private comments, including his initial admission in 2004, provide me with little confidence that he has a mature understanding of his wrongful conduct, that he has accepted full responsibility for it, or that he understands the damage he has caused,” said the commissioner.
Those who observed Rose over the years know he lives in a constant state of denial about his past actions and seems to think his ban has been some sort of overreaction, a punishment went well beyond his “crimes.”
What Rose doesn’t seem to grasp, or doesn’t seem to care about, is the threat posed to the integrity of the game and the public’s opinion of a sports league if it is thought that it’s been infiltrated by gamblers and that those inside the game are taking part in the wagering. What if Rose had gotten so deeply in debt to bookies that threats of violence had been made against him or his family? Would he have been willing to alter the way he played or managed games in order to save his own skin? Even a whiff of that kind of impropriety could be hugely damaging to the sport.
Yet, Rose seems to think bygones should be bygones, that he should be fully reinstated and the path should be paved for his entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, which could alter its rules and enshrine Rose even if he is not reinstated by Major League Baseball.
Not so fast. Like Bonds, Rose is undeniably one of the giants of the game. But like Bonds, he skews way closer to reprehensible than revered. Nothing the Hall of Fame does or does not do changes what Rose achieved in his playing days. But the Hall of Fame is a much better place without him.