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Billy Reed: Baseball is a hypocrite and a bully, still kicking Charley Hustle, relegating him to martyrdom


So now it looks as if Peter Edward Rose finally has tapped out. The commissioner of baseball recently announced that after reviewing Rose’s case yet again, he will not rescind the lifetime ban that Rose received in 1989 for gambling on games as manager of the Cincinnati Reds.

The case now seems to be closed. Rose has run out of appeals and options. He will never work in baseball again and he will never be on the ballot for the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Although Rose is the game’s all-time hits king and one of its iconic players, he will not receive a special exemption for committing the game’s ultimate sin.

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Pete Rose at Freedom Forum this summer. (Photo by Mark Hansel)

Rigid baseball purists support the commissioner’s decision. But many of us disagree on the grounds that Rose already has been punished enough. Surely his achievements as a player merit his induction into the Hall of Fame no matter what he did as a manger. Even O.J. Simpson has not been removed from either the college or pro football halls of fame.

Had the commissioner forgiven Rose and let him back into the game under strict conditions, it would have been a wonderful Christmas gift, not only for the legions of Reds fans who still revere him, but for the game itself. Pete Rose was Charley Hustle, and Charley Hustle was baseball. He played the game the way it’s supposed to be played: All-out, every inning, intolerant of losing.

In denying to overturn Rose’s ban, the commissioner said that Pete had not adequately reconfigured his life. He apparently was referring to the facts that Rose lives in Las Vegas, occasionally bets legally on baseball and other sports, and continues to make tacky public-relations gaffes such as showing up at Cooperstown on induction weekend to hawk autographs and memorabilia.

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Facebook photo

But all this does is show the commissioner has a distressing lack of insight into who Rose is and from whence he came. He grew up in working-class neighborhood where the corner bar was the center of social activity. He viewed education as a pain except when baseball was involved. At baseball, he was a genius who studied the game’s history and nuances.

Nobody ever taught Pete how to handle money or fame. Nobody ever taught him how to handle himself in public, how to be a husband and father, how to develop taste and manners. Is it any wonder that he loved fast cars and big-haired women? Pete Rose was a common as they come. Except in baseball, where he was decidedly uncommon.

What did baseball expect? That Rose would magically transform himself into something he’s not or can’t possibly be? He reconfigured his life as much as Pete Rose can possibly configure it. With his fans, it was enough. With baseball, which once banned Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays for working as casino hosts, it fell short of proving he really wanted redemption.

What the commissioner either doesn’t understand or care about is that baseball, with his rigid inability to forgive, has turned Rose into a martyr of sorts. The public wants him back in the game. For all his faults, and there are money, they love him. Had the commissioner decided in Rose’s favor, the public response would have been overwhelmingly popular.

After all, Rose is 74 now. It seems inevitable that if he is ever reinstated, he will either be dead or too feeble to enjoy it. That doesn’t seem fair or just. The man has been ridiculed and scorned and vilified for 26 years. Isn’t that punishment enough? Who did he hurt, after all, except himself? And when it comes to preserving the integrity of the game, surely even the commissioner doesn’t doubt that Rose played to win every second he was on the field.

The rule against gambling was baseball’s answer to the infamous “Black Sox” scandal of 1919, when it was discovered that members of the Chicago White Sox had accepted money from gamblers to rig games against the Reds in the World Series. It was the idea of Judge Kennesaw “Mountain” Landis, a Draconian commissioner who supported the integrity of the game except when it came to giving African-Americans the opportunity to play in organized baseball.

Charlie Hustle played the game the way it is supposed to be played. (Facebook photo)

Charlie Hustle played the game the way it is supposed to be played. (Facebook photo)

Now, as then, nobody in baseball condones gambling, unless you count the game’s business partnerships with DraftKings and other fantasy baseball operations that take in money from customers and pay out to winners. That’s gambling, folks. And there’s so much money involved in fantasy baseball that who’s to say some of today’s players aren’t getting a little action on the side?

But this is business as usual for baseball, which is as hypocritical as any other institution. In the 1990s, when business was slumped after the players’ strike of 1993, the owners turned their heads to the steroid usages that bulked up sluggers such as Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa. The sluggers brought fans back to the park and the owners tacitly approved the steroid users by ignoring the obvious.

Today it is difficult to find many big-leaguers who play the game as hard, as honestly, and as well as Rose played it. Players get fat, long-term contracts and seem to become complacent. Agents interfere with pennant races by allowing their pitching clients to only throw so many pitches before walking out and leaving their teams in a lurch. This is directly meddling with the integrity of the game, but gambling remains the only sin that can get a player banned for life.

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In the last 25 years, gambling on sports has become as socially acceptable in America as playing the stock market. In Rose’s home town of Cincinnati, gamblers have their choice of casino gambling, racetrack gambling, or lottery gambling. Nobody condones athletes betting on game in which they could potentially impact the outcome. That will never change. But should any player be banned for life? Where’s the mercy, the forgiveness, the opportunity for redemption?

From his rookie year in 1963 to the end of his career in 1987, I saw Pete Rose play a lot of games. Not once did I ever feel cheated. Not once did I ever see him loaf or give less than 100 per cent. He always had his head in the game, never giving up even when the Reds were hopelessly beaten.

At this point, however, I feel worse for baseball than I do for Rose. The national pastime, as it still calls itself, missed a wonderful opportunity to show it has a heart. The timing was perfect, considering how the National Football League has bungled one crisis after another. I don’t know if reinstating Rose would have brought some fans back to the game, but it would at least have given baseball a reason to pat itself on the back.

Now baseball looks like a bully, still kicking Rose long after he has been stripped of his dignity and lost any means of defending himself. There is something inherently wrong about this. In sport, as in life, there always should be avenues for second chances and redemption.

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Billy Reed is a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame and the Transylvania University Hall of Fame. He has been named Kentucky Sports Writer of the Year eight times and has won the Eclipse Award twice. Reed has written about a multitude of sports events for over four decades, but he is perhaps one of media’s most knowledgeable writers on the Kentucky Derby.


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2 Comments

  1. Tom Gaither says:

    Pete Rose should now give the HOF an-ultimatum: put me in now or never. They will never be complete without him and to put him in after his death would not be right.

  2. James Lindgaard says:

    Shoeless Joe Jackson had the best or about the best performances in the 1919 World Series and is banned because he was accused of taking a bribe. One day baseball might look at a players commitment to winning.
    With Rose, betting on games while being able to influence games, that is worse than using steroids and no player who was found to have used performance enhancing drugs should be allowed into the Hall of Fame.

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