Should Pete Rose be reinstated?

No proof he did it as a player, and it is as a player that he would be considered for the Hall of Fame. What he did as a manager is irrelevant.

 

He was also a player-manager for parts of three seasons. I haven't read the Dowd Report in a long time, but surely you're not claiming there is zero proof of him betting on games until 1987?

 

I haven't seen it in a while either, so I dunno if he bet as a player-manager. All I know is, if this stuff had come out 10 years after his first-ballot nomination, his plaque wouldn't be yanked out of Cooperstown. He had a Hall of Fame playing career; the rest doesn't matter to me.

 

http://www.thedowdreport.com/

 

As a player-manager, he continued to play a far, far below-replacement-level first baseman, useless on both offense and defense, virtually every day when better players were available, because the first baseman was chasing some kind of career hit record.

 

Granted, but that was hundred of hits after he had reached a Hall of Fame level in that category.

 

This won't be enough to sway anyone who thinks Pete should be inducted, but ...

The NCAA has, I discovered many years ago when doing an investigation of my own that led to a Division I program being placed on probation for two years, handed out punishments that seemed out of proportion to the offenses. In such cases, what the NCAA knew but couldn't prove in ironclad ways like what was made public is what tipped the scales.

I suspect Dowd and Giamatti knew a lot more than was published in the report, were quite confident it was true but difficult to document, and all of it was taken into account before administering the lifetime ban.

That's why I'm not sold on the "He earned it before he did anything wrong" argument. I think it is possible he did not, and I also think it's possible to do something to undo the good you've done before. I also don't care if he never bet against his team. I have never seen an exclusion to the rule that says it's OK to bet on baseball as long as you don't bet against your team. And as others have said, in essence he bet against his team on the days and nights when he didn't bet for his team.

 

All of which happened after his Hall of Fame playing career. And the concept of punishing based on what we can't prove doesn't sway me

 

Reading the Dowd Report now ... it claims Rose was betting on non-baseball sports at least by 1975. And it offers evidence that he was betting on baseball in 1985 (when he was still playing), '86 (when he was still playing) and daily summaries of his betting activity in '87 (when he was only managing.)

I'm all for looking at Rose's Hall of Fame case only for his merits on the playing field.

But to say anything he did wrong w/r/t betting on baseball happened only "after his Hall of Fame playing career" is almost certainly incorrect.

 

There's no serious or intelligent debate that Rose's playing career was HOF worthy.

It's too bad that he's not in, but it's also his own damn fault.

And he's probably better off not being in anyway -- the mere fact of his not being in becomes "newsworthy" once or twice a year, while meanwhile players of his generation with equal or superior credentials (Clemente, Aaron, Frank Robinson for instance) are rarely mentioned.

Hell, people talk and think a lot more about Joe Jackson than they do about Tris Speaker (probably a better player).

 

Yes, as I have conceded, he was a degenerate gambler on the ponies, and hell, I'll even wager, so to speak, he bet NFL and NBA games in the prime of his career. So what? And if he did bet in the part of his managing career when he was transitioning from playing, it again was hundreds of hits after he had established his HOF chops.

 

It's indisputable that he was playing when he was betting. He was betting on baseball the year he broke the all-time career hits record.

What does it matter that he was managing, too?