Rose, MLB Thawing, Even before new commissioner Rob Manfred is able to sit down for a face-to-face with Pete Rose, baseball’s banned all-time hit king is back among us, albeit slightly from afar, in a Fox TV Sports studio in Los Angeles. What remains to be seen is if Rose will ever get any closer to good-standing status in baseball, or for that matter, a place inside the hallowed halls of Cooperstown instead of in a storefront, signing autographs down the street.
But the very fact Manfred is even granting Rose an audience — something his two predecessors, Fay Vincent and Bud Selig absolutely would not — tells me the Commish is at least cognizant of this long overlooked fact: Rose is the only player in the history of baseball who has never been eligible for the Hall of Fame — and it wasn’t Bart Giamatti, the commissioner who consigned him to baseball’s permanent ineligible list in August of 1989, who determined that. It was the Hall of Fame board of directors which, a few weeks after Rose was banned, determined that the permanent ineligible list applied to the Hall of Fame as well, and informed the Baseball Writers Association that he could not be placed on its ballot.
This was a decision that would’ve probably been accepted as right and just, given Rose’s offense of breaking baseball’s cardinal rule on gambling, until the steroid cheats came along and did as much as Rose to impugn the integrity of the game by making a mockery of the record books. But other than Alex Rodriguez, whom Manfred personally successfully prosecuted, none of them was even suspended for his transgressions — Barry Bonds, who just had his obstruction of justice felony conviction overturned in a San Francisco court, has lied about his steroid use throughout, as has Roger Clemens — and, as such, have all been eligible for the Hall of Fame on the writers ballot. Though Manfred has continued to say he “doesn’t accept the analogy between gambling and steroids”, surely he must at least see the incongruity of Bonds, Clemens & Co., despite the invalidity of their records, being eligible for the Hall and Rose, whose on-the-field achievements were certainly legit, never being allowed to be at least be considered on any Hall-of-Fame ballot.
And while, as Manfred again pointed out Thursday in a meeting with APSE Sports Editors, “the rules on gambling have been in place literally for decades,” and that “they have been clear and spell out specific penalties; the reason those rules exist is because gambling is corrosive in a number of ways, including raising the specter of not doing everything they can to win,” it is worth noting in retrospect that Giamatti didn’t close the door entirely for Rose to eventually get reinstated.
In the fourth point of Giamatti’s resolution on Rose, he said: “Mr. Rose may, under Major League Rule 15 (c) apply for reinstatement. This ruling prohibits any such application for a period of at least one year.” Then, later on in the press conference, when asked if it would help Rose toward reinstatement if he sought rehabilitation for what many believed was a compulsive gambling habit, Giamatti replied: “The burden is entirely on Mr. Rose. It isn’t up to me. It’s up to Mr. Rose, it seems to me, to re-configure his life in ways I would assume he would prefer. But a person who wishes to establish the kind of record that would sustain an application would want to take whatever steps would seem appropriate to that person to be persuasive.”
The problem for Rose was he did none of that. Instead he continued to deny that he had bet on baseball for another 14 years, all the while being seen publicly in gambling casinos and spending much of his life in Las Vegas, until he finally came clean in January of 2004 with the release of his book, “My Prison Behind Bars.” At the same time, when it comes to “permanent ineligibility,”,you’d have to say Rose has done his time.
At 74, he’s too old to manage, but it seems to me there ought to be some way to remove him from the stigma of the permanent ineligible list and put him on a “restricted list” that would still prevent him from working in baseball but allow him to make promotional appearances at ballparks, serve as a sort of good-will ambassador for the Reds, or even do (anti-gambling?) public service commercials for baseball.
And Manfred again reiterated Thursday that Rose will be allowed to participate in some capacity in the 2015 All-Star Game in Cincinnati.
Then it would be up to the Hall of Fame to decide if he could take his place on a ballot, like the steroid cheats. For the record, even Shoeless Joe Jackson was eligible for years for the Hall of Fame and got two votes in the first election in 1936 and another two in 1946.
But as Bonds and Clemens could tell him, being on the ballot is one thing. Actually getting elected is something else. In that respect, there’s certainly no guarantee Rose would ever be elected to the Hall, even if, unlike the steroid cheats, everything he did on the field epitomized how the game is supposed to be played.
For that, he at least deserves a vote — instead of remaining the only player in the history of the game who never got one.
This was a decision that would’ve probably been accepted as right and just, given Rose’s offense of breaking baseball’s cardinal rule on gambling, until the steroid cheats came along and did as much as Rose to impugn the integrity of the game by making a mockery of the record books. But other than Alex Rodriguez, whom Manfred personally successfully prosecuted, none of them was even suspended for his transgressions — Barry Bonds, who just had his obstruction of justice felony conviction overturned in a San Francisco court, has lied about his steroid use throughout, as has Roger Clemens — and, as such, have all been eligible for the Hall of Fame on the writers ballot. Though Manfred has continued to say he “doesn’t accept the analogy between gambling and steroids”, surely he must at least see the incongruity of Bonds, Clemens & Co., despite the invalidity of their records, being eligible for the Hall and Rose, whose on-the-field achievements were certainly legit, never being allowed to be at least be considered on any Hall-of-Fame ballot.
And while, as Manfred again pointed out Thursday in a meeting with APSE Sports Editors, “the rules on gambling have been in place literally for decades,” and that “they have been clear and spell out specific penalties; the reason those rules exist is because gambling is corrosive in a number of ways, including raising the specter of not doing everything they can to win,” it is worth noting in retrospect that Giamatti didn’t close the door entirely for Rose to eventually get reinstated.
In the fourth point of Giamatti’s resolution on Rose, he said: “Mr. Rose may, under Major League Rule 15 (c) apply for reinstatement. This ruling prohibits any such application for a period of at least one year.” Then, later on in the press conference, when asked if it would help Rose toward reinstatement if he sought rehabilitation for what many believed was a compulsive gambling habit, Giamatti replied: “The burden is entirely on Mr. Rose. It isn’t up to me. It’s up to Mr. Rose, it seems to me, to re-configure his life in ways I would assume he would prefer. But a person who wishes to establish the kind of record that would sustain an application would want to take whatever steps would seem appropriate to that person to be persuasive.”
The problem for Rose was he did none of that. Instead he continued to deny that he had bet on baseball for another 14 years, all the while being seen publicly in gambling casinos and spending much of his life in Las Vegas, until he finally came clean in January of 2004 with the release of his book, “My Prison Behind Bars.” At the same time, when it comes to “permanent ineligibility,”,you’d have to say Rose has done his time.
At 74, he’s too old to manage, but it seems to me there ought to be some way to remove him from the stigma of the permanent ineligible list and put him on a “restricted list” that would still prevent him from working in baseball but allow him to make promotional appearances at ballparks, serve as a sort of good-will ambassador for the Reds, or even do (anti-gambling?) public service commercials for baseball.
And Manfred again reiterated Thursday that Rose will be allowed to participate in some capacity in the 2015 All-Star Game in Cincinnati.
Then it would be up to the Hall of Fame to decide if he could take his place on a ballot, like the steroid cheats. For the record, even Shoeless Joe Jackson was eligible for years for the Hall of Fame and got two votes in the first election in 1936 and another two in 1946.
But as Bonds and Clemens could tell him, being on the ballot is one thing. Actually getting elected is something else. In that respect, there’s certainly no guarantee Rose would ever be elected to the Hall, even if, unlike the steroid cheats, everything he did on the field epitomized how the game is supposed to be played.
For that, he at least deserves a vote — instead of remaining the only player in the history of the game who never got one.
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