In Defense of Pete Rose (Finally)

I am a huge baseball fan, and always have been. I played the game from 1965-1968, again from 1973-1976, and then, after over a decade playing softball from 1976-1992, returned once again and played from 1993-2017. A lot of my life was spent between those white lines, and they are moments I would never give back. I loved every second.

So today, I want to write about the complicated legacy of Peter Edward Rose.

Let’s face it: like a lot of professional baseball players (Curt Schilling, Barry Bonds, Lenny Dykstra and Wade Boggs come immediately to mind), Rose was not a rocket scientist, nor was he a candidate for the Nobel Prize.

But his job description was not “Rocket Scientist” nor was it “Nobel Prize Winner.” Nope.

Pete’s job was getting hits, catching and throwing, and winning baseball games. Anyone who says he did NOT do those things at a Hall of Fame level has never held a baseball in anger. The 1980 Phillies simply do not win a Championship without Rose. This is inarguable.

But Pete was his own worst enemy.

Every day, he walked past a sign in every MLB clubhouse than warned against the dangers of gambling and promised every player that, should he get involved with gambling, that he WOULD be banned from the game for life.

I suppose Pete thought he was above such things. He was arrogant in that way, and really, that same kind of arrogance may have been what made him such a great player given his rather pedestrian skill set.

I am certain he gambled on baseball. I am certain he gambled on his own team. Yet I am 100% certain he bet on his team to win.

For years, I felt no pity for him. He made his own bed. Thanks to his friends Joe Morgan and Mike Schmidt, Rose finally did get a meeting with the Commissioner of Baseball, Peter Seitz. In that meeting, he was told that, in order to get back in baseball’s good graces, he would need to cease any association with gambling and gamblers. That was made very clear to him,

Pete went directly from that meeting with Seitz to Las Vegas to sign autographs and kibitz with his gambling buddies. That’s self-destructive behavior if I’ve ever seen it.

But things are different in baseball today. After a century of decrying the evils of gambling, now I have to sit through ad after ad PROMOTING gambling. The announcers at each game even have the audacity to give the odds of “Alec Bohm driving in a run tonight” or “Aaron Nola getting seven strikeouts or more tonight.”

I find it infuriating, and I find it hypocritical.

How can baseball or anyone else now keep Rose out of the Hall of Fame if they are literally IN BED with gambling on a nightly basis? How long will it be before some addle-brained superstar gets in knee-deep with the wrong people and gets himself banished from the game? You already came dangerously close with the Ohtani mess.

In closing, I have the following advice for baseball: 1) get all this gambling bullshit off the air every night and away from the game; or 2) put the goddamned guy in the Hall of Fame where he belongs. Shoeless Joe, too, for that matter.

It’s just common sense.