Live look at Pete Rose hearing that he’s been reinstated by baseball yesterday:
You just knew this was going to happen. After a decades long battle to get reinstated by baseball, Rob Manfred finally gave Pete Rose what he wanted, about 9 months after he passed away.
Manfred decided to reinstate 16 previously banned, now deceased, players yesterday. Every member of the Black Sox scandal, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, and of course, the all time hit king, Pete Rose. Presumably they are all now eligible for the Hall of Fame. A few things on this:
- I’ve watched several documentaries and read three different books on Pete Rose (got a personal pan pizza out of the whole deal). By his own admission, he’s not a great guy. He’s a habitual liar, a degenerate gambler (not casting any stones there), and had a romantic relationship with a 16 year old girl (by his own admission) when was 34 years old and married. Obviously scumbag stuff. But there are a LOT of players in the Hall of Fame with similar resumes, some even worse. That doesn’t make any of it right, but those are the facts if you’re weighing off of the field issues when you consider Rose’s HOF candidacy. He is unequivocally one of the greatest hitters of all time. And a laundry list of teammates will tell you that Pete Rose would die to win a game. If we’re just examining his on the field exploits, he deserves to be inducted. If you want all of his pockmarks mentioned on his HOF plaque, fine.
- In regards to his gambling, Rose’s defense was that, yes, he gambled, but he always gambled on his team to win. To quote the movie Half Baked, “I don’t know why, but I believe him yo.” The Reds were REALLY good when he was a player and when he was a manger. It stands to reason that he would bet on them to win. And as a fellow degenerate, I have always argued in Pete’s defense that if you have money on a team to win, you are actually trying HARDER than people who don’t have money on them. In fact, NBA players should be forced to bet on their own team to win from November-February.
- I’m willing to bet (see?) that Pete Rose still isn’t getting into the Hall of Fame. Every baseball fan that read yesterday’s news seems to be automatically assuming that he’s now getting into the HOF. That’s ultimately up to the Classic Baseball Era Committee now, and they don’t vote again until December of 2027. It is a 16 member committee comprised of veteran players, writers, and executives. He’s probably fortunate that former players are on this particular committee, my guess is they all vote in favor. But the old school writers view themselves as ‘guardians of the game.’ Imagine Guardians of the Galaxy, except instead of going on whimsical inter-galactic adventures, they sit in a stuffy room and debate the merits of the greatest athletes of all time while grammar checking each other. Fun! He needs 12 of the 16 to vote in favor to get in, that’s not going to be a layup.
So there you have it. Scratch this one off of the list for Rob Manfred. Now all he has to do is get to the bottom of declining ratings, attendance, and interest in the game he’s in charge of.
PS: On the flip side of Pete Rose, I fully expect Shoeless Joe Jackson to get in at the first opportunity. By all accounts he wasn’t the sharpest man of all time (again, not casting stones here), and he hit .375 in the World Series he was supposedly throwing. From the cornfield to Cooperstown!
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