The High Court

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A Hall of Famer By Any Other Shame

December 5, 2005

 

Forgiveness can be a very tricky thing.  As a society, Americans like to think of themselves as a forgiving people.  And I suppose we are for the most part.  We are seemingly capable of forgiving almost anything, from debt to little white lies to violent crimes.  It takes especially heinous acts to make us unforgiving; but realize one thing about human nature…we always attach conditions.

 

Most often we demand that the offending party say they are sorry for whatever sin they have committed.  Even our legal system smiles favorably on remorse; but should a party fail to show remorse, well then, toss the book at them.  And so we arrive at the telling tale of The Game of Baseball (salute when you say that) versus Peter Edward Rose.  Baseball’s all-time hits leader continues to lead a solitary life on Purgatory Island, just steps away from Cooperstown immortality.  A strange place, I think, to find one of the game’s greats, but I have arrived at the conclusion that until Pete Rose is willing to offer his remorse to baseball’s establishment, he will likely continue on a path that will find his soul mingling in eternal exile with the souls of the 1919 Black Sox.

 

And that’s wrong.  Flat-out wrong.  Make no mistake; Rose is absolutely guilty of violating Major League Baseball’s Rule 21(d), which reads as follows: “Any player, umpire, or club or league official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever on any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.”  John Dowd, the investigator for Major League Baseball on the Rose case, found evidence that Rose bet on the Reds to win 52 times from 1985 through 1987.  He was never found guilty of having bet against the Reds.  Rose also bet on baseball another 360 times, but those wagers would have only been worthy of a year’s suspension, as applied to another part of the rule regarding league personnel with no duty to perform in the game wagered on.  As you already know, the late Commissioner Bart Giamatti banished Rose from baseball with the following statement.  “The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is the sad end of a sorry episode.  One of the game’s greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts.  By choosing not to come to a hearing before me, and by choosing not to proffer any testimony or evidence contrary to the evidence and information contained in the report of the Special Counsel to the Commissioner, Mr. Rose has accepted baseball’s ultimate sanction, lifetime ineligibility.”

 

While Rose’s gambling and Giamatti’s action did permanently ban Rose from baseball, what they did not do was ban him from the National Baseball Hall of Fame.  That action was taken by Giamatti’s successor, Fay Vincent, and the Hall’s Board of Directors when they closed loopholes that would have allowed either the baseball writers or the Veterans Committee to vote on players who had been placed on baseball’s ineligible list.  Until the Rose situation materialized, no player had been placed on the ineligible list permanently since the days of Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis (Leo Durocher was banned for a year in 1947 for associating with gamblers by Happy Chandler, and Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle were barred from baseball for a brief time in 1983 until they dropped their association with Atlantic City casinos.  All three men are Hall of Famers, by the way…).  And until measures were taken to make sure those players were also banned from the Hall of Fame voting, any of them could have been voted in had the electors chosen to do so.  Which leads me to the following question…Should that still be the case?  Pete Rose has missed his last chance to make the writers ballot…should they be allowed to vote on his candidacy in 2006?  And if they didn’t vote him in, should the Veterans Committee have the opportunity to grant him his spot in Cooperstown?

 

I say the answer to each of those questions is yes.  Without a single doubt in my mind, I can now answer a question I have wrestled with for over 15 years with complete confidence.  Pete Rose deserves to be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and any of the groups of electors should have the opportunity to vote on his candidacy.  Should he never be elected, I will find myself in disagreement with the electors, but I will respect their decision.  But for Rose to never have the chance to gain entry to the Hall is a greater crime against the game of baseball than any he ever committed.

 

Gambling on the game has always been regarded as the game’s greatest sin.  But until the Black Sox scandal tarnished the World Series, it may also have been the game’s most open dirty little secret.  Game-fixers had been in business for years in a system where players were generally poorly compensated.  Those willing to dump games could easily make more money working with gamblers than they could earn playing it straight.  It was baseball’s steroid controversy of the day, only with the reverse intent.  Instead of worrying about performance enhancement, those bums were interested in intentional performance decline.  Hal Chase, widely considered one of the finest defensive first baseman of the era, was a well-known game-fixer prior to the Black Sox saga.  His activities forced John McGraw to boot him and teammate Heinie Zimmerman from the New York Giants.  Chase and Zimmerman would then become the player liaisons for Arnold Rothstein’s gambling ring that ensnared the Black Sox crew.  And it was the actions of that infamous bunch (although both Shoeless Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver are both widely believed to have been innocent) that led to baseball’s Rule 21.

 

And what do we know about Rule 21’s intent?  Isn’t the rule’s intent to prevent Major League Baseball personnel from throwing games?  I think we can all agree that is almost exactly the intent behind the rule.  It was never intended to catch gambling junkies so badly in need of a new outlet (or a sure thing) that they bet on themselves to win.  Don’t think that I am about to let Rose off the hook simply because he didn’t violate the spirit of the rule, either.  He violated the letter of the law, and to let him walk just because he didn’t throw games would place baseball on a slippery slope they can ill afford to be on when it comes to rule enforcement.  Rose says his punishment doesn’t fit the crime.  I say where being involved with baseball is concerned, it most certainly does.  You will never, ever hear me advocate that Pete Rose deserves to be let back in the game in any capacity.  He was (and apparently still is) a fool.  He violated the trust of the game he has always professed to love.  For that he can take an eternal seat outside the stadium.

 

But again, that isn’t the question I asked earlier.  Simply put, Pete Rose and his 4,256 hits belong in the Hall of Fame.  For him to be kept out is nothing more than hypocrisy and spite.  I have heard and seen several people suggest that the low moral character shown by many members of the Hall had nowhere near the detrimental effect on baseball that Rose’s gambling did.  I say that is crazier than Rose is stupid.  Because frankly, if you are going to attach an integrity and morals rider to directions guiding Hall electors (see Rule 5) when considering candidates, then you better be willing to weigh the effects players with zero integrity and low morals may have had on the game.  You can tell me all day long that Rose’s sins against the game are worse than those of alcoholics, bigots, criminals, wife-beaters, and womanizers, and I will be more than happy to laugh in your face.  Would I rather explain to my son why we revere Ty Cobb or Pete Rose?  I’ll take Rose every single time.

 

Bart Giamatti was a wise man.  A very wise man, I think.  And had he not passed away almost immediately after Rose’s banishment, I believe we would be celebrating the tenth anniversary of Rose’s induction to Cooperstown.  It appeared that Giamatti never had any intention of making Rose suffer permanently, but the Commissioner knew that he must be punished severely.  These were his closing remarks the day that he banned Rose from the game.  “The matter of Mr. Rose is now closed.  It will be debated and discussed.  Let no one think that it did not hurt baseball.  That hurt will pass, however, as the great glory of the game asserts itself and a resilient institution goes forward.  Let it also be clear that no individual is superior to the game.”

 

Incredibly well said.  But let me add this to Mr. Giamatti’s sage words...No game is bigger than life.  I love the game of baseball as much as anyone can.  The only thing I ever wanted to be was a baseball player.  It still is the only thing I want to be, as a matter of fact.  But it is just a game.  No matter how many times those of us who love it refer to it as ‘The GAME’, that’s what it is.  Baseball has always survived its own struggles, whether it was gambling, wars, integration (a war in its own right), free agency, labor stoppages, and alcohol, amphetamine, and cocaine addictions.  And of course it will survive steroids.  The sanctity of the game, though, should never override the fact that we are decent human beings.  We tend to give everyone a second chance.  Certainly baseball has been willing to overlook the transgressions of alcohol and drug addicts many times over.  Isn’t The Hit King worthy of a second chance, at least where Cooperstown is concerned?

 

Baseball’s establishment offends me in a great many ways with its high-handed hypocrisy.  Buck O’Neil, the great Negro League ambassador, is on a special Veterans ballot this year, and that is an honor only about forty years too late in coming.  How long ago do you think that all of the legendary figures O’Neil has kept alive with his wonderful stories would have been inducted had they not been kept out of Major League Baseball by a borderline nuts, power-drunk bigot like Commissioner Landis?  How good was racial segregation for the game of baseball, by the way?  Would the game have not been better off with the Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, and O’Neil competing with and against the likes of Cobb, Ruth, Dizzy Dean, and Joe DiMaggio?  So every single time somebody jumps on their high horse and says Rose threatened the integrity of the game, you tell them about segregation in baseball and inform them you weren’t aware the game had any integrity left to impugn in the 1980’s.

 

Here’s the kicker, for the record.  I hated Pete Rose as a player.  Absolutely despised him.  But over time, as I grew in my own career and developed a passion for the history of the game, I came to respect what Rose had accomplished in the game of baseball, and the way he achieved it.  Pete Rose never cheated the game of baseball for a second.  When people refer to him as a cheat, they better be talking about taxes.  Because on the diamond, Rose gave every ounce of himself to the game.  The way Rose played was raw and visceral; he attacked the game.  Everything Charlie Hustle did on a baseball field fills the mind with indelible images…close your eyes and you can see Rose crashing into Ray Fosse…launching into one of his trademark headfirst slides…springing from his patented crouch and sprinting to first base with his walk.  Rose played the game with child-like zeal and enthusiasm.  He may well have embodied the very spirit of the game more than any player who has ever pulled on a uniform.  And we don’t want that man enshrined in the Hall of Fame?

 

Will remorse ever come from Pete Rose?  It may, but probably only with time.  Advancing age has peeled away layers of bravado and pride from many tough hides over the years; the likelihood is that some day Rose will come face to face with his own mortality and then, and perhaps only then, will he drop the defiant and cocksure exterior that allowed him to lie to all of us for better than fifteen years.  At some point, with only his legacy left in front of him, Rose may decide to be truly remorseful in an effort to obtain the place in history that he craves.  But part of me hopes not.  Because the arrogance which allowed Pete Rose to keep telling his lie and keep selling himself all these years was the same arrogance that allowed a mediocre talent to forge himself into one of the greatest players in baseball history.  Let’s let Pete be Pete, once and for all.

 

And let’s open those doors…

 

 

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