Last obstacle for Hall of Fame removed for Pete Rose
The Big Easy knows how to watch a football game
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The last obstacle for the induction of Pete Rose into the Baseball Hall of Fame was finally removed Monday - Pete Rose himself.
The most prolific hitter in the history of baseball died Monday at the age of 83.
His brash and cocky demeanor - traits that made him unstoppable on the baseball diamond - also prevented him from reaching immortality in Cooperstown.
Rose was incapable of being humble or admitting he had done anything wrong, so whether Pete Rose bet on baseball when he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds in the 1980s - oh my goodness that was 40 years ago - is still something we debate today.
It was one of those all-consuming stories at the time and everyone had an opinion.
That's probably still true and you will be hearing more about it in the coming days.
Rose, who retired with more hits than anyone in baseball history, was a hometown hero in Cincinnati as part of the Big Red Machine of the 1970s, became the highest paid player in baseball while with the Philadelphia Phillies while leading them to a world championship and was simply larger than life.
As a young sportswriter covering the 1982 All-Star game in Montreal, I got to see it up close as he lashed out at any locker room query he felt beneath him.
He was kind of scary.
The gambling accusations against Rose came to a head in 1989 when John Dowd, a special counsel to the commissioner of baseball, A. Bartlett Giamatti, submitted a 225-page report which found Rose had bet on baseball during the 1980s scores of times.
Giamatti suspended Rose for life for violating Rule 21, Section D, Number 2 which states that a player or official involved in a game who bets on that game shall be declared permanently ineligible. The precedent was the 1919 Chicago Black Sox who took money to throw the World Series. Any player on the "ineligible" list was also ineligible to for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
For the next 13 years, Rose refused to admit he did any wrong.
He played by his own set of rules.
Each year, he showed up in Cooperstown during Hall of Fame induction weekend and signed autographs at various baseball card shops around town. It was as if he wanted baseball to know he wasn't going away and he was going to be there whether officially or unofficially.
I remember seeing him sitting alone one year, this solitary ostracized aging baseball star, waiting to see who else might plunk down some cash for a moment in his presence.
It was kind of sad, but he kept coming back year after year in some kind of personal act of defiance.
Fans and some sportswriters made the case that Rose should be allowed entry into the Hall of Fame, citing other more unsavory acts of drug abuse, domestic violence and steroids by players who were not punished to the same degree.
After all, Pete Rose never took steroids.
I was in the banned-for-life camp and often penned columns saying he should not be forgiven. After one such column for The Post-Star, I got a personal letter from John Dowd thanking me and urging me to keep up the fight.
And I did.
Rose finally did admit he bet on baseball in 2004, but only as part of selling his own autobiography.
Just recently, I watched a four-part documentary on HBO about Rose called "Charlie Hustle & the Matter of Pete Rose."
He was in his 80s, still gambling, still signing autographs and finally admitting - sometimes - that he bet on baseball.
The story kept changing depending on who he was talking to and how it served his interests.
While there were plenty of interviews from former teammates about how great Rose was as a player, the documentary is filled with a collection of unsavory characters from his off-field life that included star-struck enablers, drug dealers and bookmakers.
While we are reminded of what a great player Rose was, it also points out he wasn't the best father, husband or citizen. I had completely forgot he did did time for income tax invasion.
In recent years, his lawyer kept trying to get baseball to forgive him.
I suspect most of the fans already had.
What the documentary captured from Rose the Octogenarian was a hardened man who didn't seem to have learned anything from his mistakes.
And that's the way he left it Monday on his way to his own personal Field of Dreams. Whether they let him play there is unclear.
Rose's baseball career was unparalleled.
His accomplishments too many to list and hard to imagine anyone duplicating.
Rose earned a reputation as a hustler early in his career by sprinting to first base after walks. While many admired that, it rubbed many the wrong way like some phony work ethic.
He was also a "hustler" later in life, but in a different sense.
The question in the coming days will be whether it is appropriate now to forgive him.
He cannot embarrass baseball with an induction speech where he might change his story again, but there are many who believe this is about principle; that he never apologized significantly enough for what he did; he never totally came clean.
Over time, I've softened my stand. What Rose did was reprehensible. And it put baseball at risk as a sport, but what the HBO documentary reminded you was that he was a player who squeezed every last ounce of effort into each game.
That is still something to marvel at today.
These days, baseball teams make significant revenue from online sports gambling sites. When you consider what Rose was accused of doing, the hypocrisy is obvious.
Most of the admitted steroid users have been kept out of the Hall of Fame as well, but not banned.
Their future place in history is left up to the sportswriters, not the lawyers.
There is a place for Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame. The question is whether it should always be with the 1919 Chicago Black Sox.
Pete Rose cannot tarnish the game further.
Take him off the ineligible left.
Waive the five-year-waiting period and let Charlie Hustle sprint into the Hall of Fame this summer.
He has paid the price for his sins.
Sidewalk football
Watching pro football in Hawaii is a very different experience.
When you are five or six time zones behind the start of the game, you have to get up really early to see kickoff.
But that's a positive.
The game is over by noon and you have an entire day in paradise ahead of you.
The negative is there is no home-team fans. The people watching are fellow tourists and all rooting for different teams, so there is little energy in the experience.
Not true in New Orleans.
We were planning on watching the Saints game in Manning's - Archie Manning's old restaurant, although it is owned by a casino now - with a million big-screen TVs tuned into the Saints.
But by the time we got there, the place was full and not taking allowing us in.
So we went across the street to the Ernst Cafe where they had wheeled out 60-inch big screen TVs onto the sidewalk surrounded by picnic tables. We purchased a bucket of ice cold beer and found the energy that was missing in Hawaii on a balmy Sunday afternoon with football passion all around us.
Unfortunately, the Saints lost to Atlanta on a last-second 58-yard field goal.
Politics and football
It was surprising to see in the middle of the New Orleans football game, a political ad for Kamala Harris. I wondered why Harris' campaign was wasting money on a state that was traditionally red.
Then right after the Harris ad, came a Trump ad.
Then, another Harris ad and one man said something disparaging about Harris and for a good five minutes, neither of them watched any football.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
I grew up in Cincinnati and am still a fan. Long-suffering at this point. Why not put it down to Charlie Hustle's betting on a Reds game (or more) while he managed the team? That bad deal the Red Sox made with the Yankees was for decades blamed as the cause of the long Red Sox post season drought.
I can't agree with you on Rose's final baseball resting place in the Hall of Fame. He cheated. You say he still lied to his last days if it served his purpose. Oddly enough, we currently have a presidential campaign in which one of the candidates lies as often as he breathes.
No, he cheated and the players who made hay by taking steroids cheated. Should he be recognized for getting everything out of his talent all he could? You bet. His stats were and remain enormous. His ambition was to be the highest paid singles hitter. Okay. He got paid so very well for his on the field exploits.
But there are some people who are very talented, like Rose, and you love the work they do. But as human beings? They're miserable. I love listening to Sinatra. That man had a terrific voice and knew exactly how to phrase the lyrics and I've always watched him. But like Rose, a nasty piece of work in real life. So, you recognize the gift as displayed, you praise it, and you are relieved when you know that they were pretty mean human beings and you're grateful you were never in their crosshairs.
Just finished a lousy sports book titled “win at all costs” about Nike. Wasn’t that also the story of Charlie Hustle (Charlie Hustler?)? A great player but abusive on and off the field. Even in his dotage weird: during his autograph sessions, offering to add - for an extra fee - an apology for gambling.
Recently Making sexual taunts to the wife of a nationally known sports announcer. Just too much.