In case anyone hasn’t seen it, today the Commissioner denied Pete Rose reinstatement to baseball. That means Rose will remain ineligible to participate in any MLB related activities except by special permission of the office of the Commissioner. He will also remain ineligible for election to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Without knowing for sure, I presume this means Rose will remain ineligible through the rest of his lifetime unless there is new evidence in his case, he shows genuine remorse, or there is a new Commissioner.
My only comment is “Thank you, Mr. Commissioner.”
Tags: Pete Rose
Verdun2's Blog 
December 14, 2015 at 2:47 pm
Before I listened to Pete Rose talk about Pete Rose, and before I learned from Pete Rose about Pete Rose, I used to support his reinstatement. Well done, Mr. Manfred.
December 14, 2015 at 2:57 pm
The man makes my skin crawl.
December 14, 2015 at 3:30 pm
Couldn’t have happened to nicer guy
December 14, 2015 at 6:02 pm
Actually, there are shades of gray with every person. In many ways, Pete Rose IS a nice guy. If you read the book by Sokolove “Hustle: The Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Rose”, you will find many things that will surprise you, such as that how, in the early 60s when he came up to the Reds, he would hang out with the black players. No other player on the Reds would do that. The front office of the Reds tried very hard to get him not to do this, but he didn’t care. He did it anyway. So in many ways, he was the Pee Wee Reese of the Cincinnati Reds. Like him or hate him, Pete Rose has and always will be Pete Rose, an unpretentious person who doesn’t give a damn what other people think of him.
I am getting sick and tired of people acting like Pete Rose is some kind of an awful, awful person. If you ever saw Pete Rose play, like I did, you would know that he embodied everything that baseball stood for. He was exciting, he was animated, he was FUN. There has NEVER been any proof that he bet on games AS A PLAYER, and that is what he would be put into the Hall of Fame as: A player, not as a manager. (He was a crappy manager in more ways than one.)
This has gotten past the point of ridiculousness. Pete Rose is not a bad guy. He’s got problems, for sure, but he’s not as sleazy as many people would say he is. Barry Bonds? Well, THERE’S A SLEAZE as well as a nasty guy who cheated AS A PLAYER. Mark McGuire? A BIG sleaze, a tremendous phony, and he cheated AS A PLAYER.
Anyone who actually saw Pete Rose, arguably the most exciting player in baseball history, should be in the Hall of Fame AS A PLAYER. He bet AS A MANAGER. NO one would ever consider putting Rose in the Hall of Fame as a manager, just like no one would ever consider putting Sparky Anderson in the Hall of Fame as a PLAYER! Let’s put this in perspective.
Glen
December 14, 2015 at 6:10 pm
What I MEANT to put in that last paragraph: Anyone who actually saw Pete Rose in action should very well know that he was (arguably) the most exciting player in baseball in the last 55 years. I was one of the fortunate people who saw him as a player, from 1970 until his retirement. They should realize that should be in the Hall of Fame AS A PLAYER. People seem to forget: Pete Rose bet AS A MANAGER. NO one would ever consider putting Rose in the Hall of Fame as a manager, just as no one would ever consider putting Sparky Anderson in the Hall of Fame as a PLAYER! Let’s put this in perspective.
Glen
December 15, 2015 at 1:54 pm
Rose has had several opportunities over the past quarter century to show the baseball community that he has been taking his ban seriously enough to change his lifestyle. Meanwhile, he continues to hang out in Vegas casinos, hawking autographs, then getting charged for tax evasion. Some people just don’t know when to stop.
Also, there is evidence that he bet on baseball as a player/manager for the Reds in the mid-80’s. And how many years did it take for him to finally admit that he actually did bet on baseball at all? He only did it then because he received a one million dollar advance for his book, “My Prison Without Bars,” a study in self-pity if there ever was one.
December 15, 2015 at 8:46 am
Glen–
Look, Rule 21 addresses gambling by “uniformed personnel” which includes managers. The player/manager distinction is not a meaningful one here, and you can make the argument that having a manager bet on games is much more potentially damaging than having a player do so. As far as whether he is a bad guy or not….well, it’s not the “Hall Of Nice.” Yes, there are some bad guys in there. Yes, Bonds and Clemens are odious human beings, and what they and their PED compatriots did harmed the game, and if they are denied entry to Cooperstown because of that, I won’t shed a single tear. That said, gambling came very, very, very close to destroying the game–the harm it caused to MLB dwarfs the harm PEDs did to the game.
Look, since Pete Rose made his debut in 1963, over 9000 players have entered the bigs. I’d guess another fifteen thousand or so have been in camp without making the show. All of those thousands and thousands of players saw the sign in the clubhouse which details Rule 21 word for word, and all of them heard representatives from the Commissioner’s Office tell them what happens if you violate the rule against gambling–hell, Pete Rose heard that speech probably thirty times. Of all those thousands and thousands of players, only one ran afoul of the rules. Only one. Why does that one man deserve special treatment, why would that one man be above the rules? Rob Manfred (somewhat shockingly, in my view) made the right call.
December 15, 2015 at 6:28 am
Rose still gets to hustle all he likes in Las Vegas, such a promised land ending or beginning for a guy who experienced it all and nothing in one quick breath.
December 15, 2015 at 11:55 am
WK, with all due respect, I don’t think that you understand what I’m referring to. I was saying that, yes, Pete Rose was found to be gambling. He was found to be gambling AS A MANAGER, NOT AS A PLAYER. I do not understand why Pete Rose should be denied admission to the Hall of Fame AS A PLAYER if he was never found to be gambling AS A PLAYER. Sparky Anderson, his manager, was inducted into the Hall of Fame based on HIS MANAGERIAL STATISTICS, not as a player. He was NOT inducted as a player, nor should he have been.
Just as Sparky Anderson stunk as a player, Pete Rose was GREAT as a player. And even if Pete Rose had a great managerial record (which, of course, he didn’t), he should not be put in the Hall of Fame as a MANAGER. But it is obvious that the Hall of Fame considers the two things SEPARATELY. Which is why Sparky Anderson is in there, Tom LaSorda is in there (and if people are going to say things like “this man makes my skin crawl” or sarcastically say “couldn’t happen to a nicer guy”, they should take in account a REAL sleazeball—- Tom LaSorda, who turned his back on his own son while his son was dying of AIDS.) Also Joe Torre is in there, and others. But LaSorda, Torre, and Anderson and Walter Alston, as well, were in there because of their managerial ability, not for their playing ability. (Even though Torre was a good player, he wasn’t good enough for the Hall of Fame).
Let me just say the bottom line again. Pete Rose was found to be betting AS A MANAGER. He was NOT found to be betting AS A PLAYER. Therefore, he should be inducted AS A PLAYER. There are plenty of guys in the Hall of Fame who were great players, but not great managers at all. They were inducted into the Hall of Fame AS PLAYERS, and NOT AS MANAGERS!
YES. Pete Rose bet. But he bet AS A MANAGER!
And I can think of cheating on the field that comes pretty damn close to gambling, although it’s not gambling, per se. What about all of these players who need one hit in order to win the batting crown, so they make a little deal with the third baseman to (ahem) play deep at third so that the batting crown candidate can lay down a nice little bunt and therefore the third baseman can run in all that he wants to but can’t POSSIBLY get to the ball before the guy makes it to first and, thusly, he wins the Batting Crown. This has been documented in “Ball Four” as well as other places. But people just treat that with a smile and a wink???? What a double standard.
Again, Pete Rose DID NOT gamble as a player, and we are talking about induction AS A PLAYER. The damn guy earned it with his hustle. How many guys, even Hall-of-famers, have you seen dogging it down the first base line? (The first one who comes to mind is Carl Yastrzemski.) But he’s in the hall of fame.
Don’t you see the point I’m making? I may not know my ass from my elbow in other areas, and I don’t understand WAR and those other sabermetrics, and I don’t know much geometry, don’t know much trigonometry, don’t know much about science book, don’t know much about the French I took, but I know this much—- if Pete Rose gets voted into the Hall of Fame AS A PLAYER and ONLY as A PLAYER, what a wonderful world this would be.
Come on! You must realize that Rose had no pock marks as a PLAYER!
Glen
December 15, 2015 at 3:00 pm
He was a great player who busted his butt, no doubt.. So was Ken Griffey, Jr. So was Cal Ripken. So was Frank Thomas and so on and so on. The point is that none of them, nor any of the hundreds and hundreds of players who were Rose’s contemporaries, were banned for life for gambling. And, again, Rule 21 makes no differentiation between managers and players, and that fact that Pete “played the game the right way” makes zero difference–he bet on baseball, he’s banned for life, and the fact that he was a great player doesn’t exempt him from the rulebook.
December 16, 2015 at 10:15 am
Put the guy in…all these supposed “moral codes” mean nothing anymore. It all comes down to the bottom line: clicking the turnstiles and making rich people even more rich. It gets to be sickening at times when fans arbitrarily throw puritanical ethics into baseball. It’s equivalent to not putting an individual’s star on the Hollywood walk of fame when half of the people in the entertainment industry are complete scumbags…yet no one cares. Why should baseball be the standard bearer?
December 16, 2015 at 10:16 am
Also…never forget Ray Fosse. 🙂