His name inarguably belongs in the record books, but his ghost doesn’t belong in Cooperstown.
His name inarguably belongs in the record books, but his ghost doesn’t belong in Cooperstown.
P ete Rose, Mr. Charlie Hustle, rightly has a unique place in the lore of baseball as the man with the most career hits in the game: 4,256 over 3,562 games.
And a man with three World Series rings, a National League MVP, and 17 All-Star appearances certainly has an inarguable place in history.
But, until this week, it was accepted that Rose’s record came with an indelible stain, ever since it emerged in 1989 that he had spent years betting on baseball games, including games in which he was involved.
For decades, the fact of these sins against the game was accepted and acknowledged by everyone — even those supporting his cause for sporting immortality. Pete Rose did what he did and it was wrong, no one disputed this. Except, that is, Rose himself, who opted first for bold-faced denial, followed by decades of winking of half-admissions. He did acknowledge his punishment of being placed on the game’s list of permanent ineligibility — banning him from the sport for life — while continually appealing for reinstatement until his death last year.
From 1991 onward, when a rule change formalized what had previously been sacrosanct custom, his excommunicated status carried with it explicit exclusion from consideration for the Baseball Hall of Fame. For those who saw Rose for what he was, an unrepentant offender, it was justice (as I have written before).
At least it was until this week, when Rose was rehabilitated by Rob Manfred, a man in perennial competition with himself for worst commissioner in baseball history.
Manfred has issued posthumous clemency to Rose, as well as to the infamous Chicago Black Sox, who threw a World Series and became a centennial byword for betrayal of the game. They are all now eligible for induction into Cooperstown.
With such precedents set, no one can realistically expect the Hall to long hold out against admitting the likes of Barry Bonds and the rest of the Roid Ranger generation. And, in due course, perhaps the infamous trashcan cheats of the 2017 Houston Astr*s, too, because why not?
I will tell you why not. Baseball as the national pastime has always held itself to enshrining more than just sporting excellence. It lays claim to a key part of the American cultural soul. The Hall of Fame isn’t just a monument to stats, or a shrine in honor of winning — on the contrary, baseball is a game based on the nobility of perseverance and sportsmanship in the face of failure.
Baseball alone among sports accepts that even its greatest players will strike out more times than they get on base, or get lit up from the mound and need to be pulled far more times than they can successfully complete a game.
Its true greats extol how you play the game, how you embody that nobility, and how you respect the endeavor as the ultimate test for admission to Cooperstown, over and above mere winning and losing. That baseball is about more than winning is what makes it more than a game.
And through their sins against the game, Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson betrayed that nobility. They sold that precious piece of the American soul of which the game claims custody. In Rose’s case, his forgiveness now is all the more unmerited, because he never showed an ounce of sincere contrition.
His final confession of guilt in 2004 was a marketing gimmick meant to juice sales of his own book. Right up until his death last year he was grifting cash off his pariah status, selling a range of “sorry, not sorry” memorabilia.
Despite defenses made in his name, including by Dan McLaughlin and Rich Lowry in these pages, it doesn’t matter in the slightest that Rose bet on his own team to win, as opposed to Jackson, who threw the World Series.
Rose’s real sin wasn’t betting on games. It was considering himself above the rules — and he never stopped doing so. He lied about what he did, and carried on lying about it for years, until one day it was more profitable for him to tell the truth. In the many, many, petitions he filed for reinstatement, he never once sued baseball for forgiveness, or expressed anything like sincere contrition.
Pete Rose didn’t break the rules. He flouted them. He didn’t ask for reinstatement because he was sorry; he believed his status as the Hit King demanded it by right — and so do his advocates now. He, and they, think he is above the law and bigger than the game.
The argument for Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame is that, in the end, winning is all that matters. That logic is anathema to baseball as it has been handed down through the generations. Rob Manfred’s offer of cheap grace for Rose and for the Black Sox is its own indictment of the spiritual decline of the game, which has now made its bed with the same vicious bookmakers who led Rose and Jackson astray.
The commissioner’s reasoning — and I am stretching the word to its fullest elasticity — is that “a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game.”
“It is hard to conceive of a penalty that has more deterrent effect than one that lasts a lifetime with no reprieve,” he has argued. This just shows, again, the commissioner’s historical nihilism, and failure to grasp the basic nature of the game and purpose of a place like Cooperstown.
If the past does not inspire us to imitation, what exactly is the Hall of Fame for? If Pete Rose’s inclusion doesn’t teach a lesson about virtue, character, and what we chose to celebrate, why induct anyone at all? For what it’s worth, Rose himself thought a post-mortem induction would be “pointless.” Of course he did, because in the end it was all about Pete for Pete, and never about the game.
The real tragedy of Rose’s reinstatement is that it clears the way to erase one of the great noble compromises baseball created to deal with figures like Rose, or Bonds, or the Astr*s and the rest.
Baseball is a monumental sport, in the literal sense. It chronicles its winners and losers and heroes and villains, pitch by pitch. But what do you do with winners who win the wrong way? Their achievements were not erased, but duly set in stone. The men themselves, however, were kept out, the doors to Cooperstown Valhalla shut on them for having broken faith with their teammates, their opponents, the fans, and the game.
While his name inarguably belongs in the record books, the ghost of Peter Rose doesn’t deserve to walk the Hall of Fame. It deserves to instead wander the spiritual limbo of an Iowa cornfield, unrepentant as he was — and so deservedly unredeemed.