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Baseball legend Pete Rose accomplished in death what he could never manage in his lifetime – reinstatement to Major League Baseball. Yet baseball “purists” are clutching their pearls, terrified that the bad man will now be admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
They’re dead wrong. Time for Pete to enter Cooperstown, no matter what the baseball eggheads may be saying.
For those too young to remember, Pete Rose is one of the greatest, most exciting athletes ever to pick up a glove. Rose remains baseball’s all-time Hit King, with 4,256 base hits to his name, three World Series titles, 17 All-Star Game appearances and more hitting records than you can shake a Louisville Slugger at.
In 1978, he tore off a National League record 44 consecutive game hitting streak. And for more than two decades, major league pitchers had nightmares about Pete Rose dancing off third base.
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Rose was a man ahead of his time, in the sense that he was gambling long before America’s major sports, and our society as a whole, embraced the habit. Of course, Rose didn’t simply log onto FanDuel and put 50 bucks on the Lakers. He bet on baseball games while managing his hometown team, the Cincinnati Reds. That’s what got him booted in disgrace from the game.
It’s easy to understand why Rose got tossed. Baseball had been through cheating scandals before. The 1919 Chicago White Sox threw the World Series at the behest of gamblers, as demonstrated in the book and movie “Eight Men Out.” The 1918 World Series might also have been fixed.
Protecting the integrity of the game was paramount to MLB commissioners and to the Baseball Hall of Fame. But as commissioner Rob Manford said, as he reinstated Rose, it’s hard to see what damage someone can do to the game from the grave.
There are plenty of people who would love to see Rose’s exile continue forever. They say his actions took baseball down a slippery slope from which it will never recover. Oh, please. They overlook his greatness on the field and focus on his personal shortcomings, which admittedly were numerous.
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But the Baseball Hall of Fame does not exist to honor character. If it did, they would have to take down the plaques of Ty Cobb, a notorious racist and an all-around lousy human being, and countless other malefactors who could swing a bat or throw strikes.
Rose’s choices did not affect the outcomes of games, unlike the later baseball players whose use of performance enhancing drugs boosted their statistics and transformed the standings. He only hurt himself.
Back in 1973, when I was 15, I cut school to watch the Mets play the Reds in the National League Championship Series, a game marked by Pete Rose and Mets shortstop Buddy Harrelson getting into a violent confrontation that nearly resulted in a Mets forfeit.
Mets manager Yogi Berra and legendary player Willie Mays actually walked out to left field to urge the fans in the stands to stop throwing liquor bottles and batteries at the players.
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Years later, I met Rose at the Las Vegas memorabilia store where he would sign a photo or a baseball for a fee. I told him that I’d witnessed his scuffle with Harrelson.
“We lost,” he snapped at me. “Why would I wanna hear about that game?”
It took Rose decades to acknowledge the gambling, probably because he never really thought he did anything that bad. His unapologetic stance undoubtedly cost him reinstatement in baseball and admission to the Hall of Fame in his lifetime.
Yet admitting Rose to the Hall of Fame now doesn’t simply honor his memory. It celebrates his greatness in the memories of fans like me, and younger fans who study the history of the game.
The Classic Baseball committee is not scheduled to meet until December 2027 to determine Rose’s fate. Here’s hoping they get together on a Zoom call today, right now, and give Pete Rose his due.
That man was a Hall of Famer from the time he first put on a Reds uniform. He went to his death without forgiveness or vindication. That’s an error in the scorebooks if I ever saw one. It’s time to put the Hit King where he belongs. On a plaque in Cooperstown, with the rest of the immortals. And the pearl clutching sports “experts” can take a hike.
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