I address Jenkins above.
Howe was banned for life like Rose and Jackson. Yet it didn’t stick.
And more to the point, let’s say I completely 100% agree Rose and Jackson should be banned from baseball forever. That in of itself should not stop the HoF from considering them for entry. I suspect many who favor one or both of them being reinstated is it is just for Hall eligibility.
Not saying the should get in, but there should not be an artificial barrier to them being considered.
Can someone answer me this (even outside of 1919 timelines) - what choices did Jackson have? As I’ve read some money was thrown into his hotel room.
Does he go to his manager and tell about the plan? To this day he’d be a Rat.
Cheating Astros? Well I will take the high road and play the game as always, and ignore my teammates banging on a metal drum to let me know whither a fastball or off-speed be coming?
Although if asked in November, I will first deny it entirely then say “I took the high road”
Trump has a longstanding gripe with the NFL; he bought into the USFL in part because he felt he was blackballed in his several attempts to buy NFL franchises in the early 1980s.
Trump posted on social media Feb. 28 that he plans to issue “a complete PARDON of Pete Rose.” Trump posted on Truth Social that Rose “shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING.”
I’d say it’s a sure thing that he knows something about him, if only that he was “a hard-nosed player who played hard and always wanted to win”, as the myth* of Pete Rose goes.
Does he worry about the cost of the integrity of the game? Donald Trump wouldn’t know anything about integrity if it bit him on the ass, and he lives in a world where such considerations simply don’t apply to him and those he favors.
* Not saying it’s not the reality of Pete Rose - using myth in the sense of a prevailing narrative, rather than “a story we know isn’t true”.
Umm, tough shit and good? He didn’t have the money so it’d be some partnership.
He was at the last superbowl for 10 fucking minutes. How much extra security and searches of fans were there?
I’d like to know opinions on the options Joe Jackson had:
Is she really going out with him? Is she really going to take him home tonight?
Wrong Joe!
I had heard he got his nickname because his new cleats were giving him blisters, so he went to bat in his socks And a clever fan shouted “You shoeless son of a gun” - and this is pre-professional yet cool nicknames like that tend to stick.
Jackson was initially a pitcher, but one day he accidentally broke another player’s arm with a fastball. No one wanted to bat against him, so the team manager placed him in the outfield.
How does that work? Throwing wild, throwing at- neither!" Fuck that shit. “accidentally broke another player’s arm”. The league fears you? What is an umpire to do? “Umm, stand over there and take the walk and get a pussy moniker”
Would 1, 2 and especially 3 and 4 of the Bronx Bombers fear batting against him? Fuck, he’d have been a Yankee. Yeah I know, slightly different era
So the dilemma is: What could Joe Jackson have done? He told his teammates he didn’t want the money. He reports them to his manager he is “Shoeless Ratso”. Then what happens? Baseball didn’t even have a commissioner at the time. “Shoeless Joe rats on his team!” is the headline.
His 1919 World Series stats:
Games Played: 8
Batting Average: .375 (12-for-32), leading all players in the Series
Hits: 12 (a World Series record at the time)
Runs Scored:
Doubles: 3
Home Runs: 1 (the only homer in the Series)
RBIs: 6
On-Base Percentage (OBP): .394
Slugging Percentage (SLG): .563
OPS: .956
Fielding: No errors in 27 chances; 1.000 fielding percentage
This was a best of nine so really only the impressive percentage stats apply. And this was the “dead ball era” and the ballparks were huge, so not many homers would be expected then. The Batting Average - if that counts - has not been surpassed in a World Series.
Two other things:
One, how many other people knew but said nothing? There had to have been tons of them. Did they all get the same punishment?
Two, a lifetime ban is the most severe punishment MLB can give out. To give the same punishment to the guys who actually threw the game, and to the guy who just didn’t tell on the guys throwing the game, says that what they both did was equally bad. It wasn’t.
Not that I disagree with you, but Commissioner Landis believed (for better or for worse) that the future of baseball was dependent on relentlessly eliminating any hint of a “criminal element” in the game — as noted upthread, Landis was the same person who issued a lifetime ban to Benny Kauff, who had been implicated (and acquitted) for his involvement in a car theft.
I suspect that Landis believed that harsh punishments were necessary, to not only penalize those who had broken the rules, but to send a message to players as a whole, about the consequences of misbehavior. As a result, several players received punishment that was, arguably, out of proportion to their actions.
Sure, yet what kind of ban do you get if you rat on your team; come next season? Before or after? And again, to whom? There were only his manager and no commissioner.
And in on the action is one of the Chicago mobs. Are nine going to say “No”. To many of the lesser players this was multiples of what Komiskey was paying.
I’m even sadder for Shoeless Joe because he could pitch. Fastballs, like Clemens or Nolan Ryan (who early on would blaze a 101 MPH fastball that might hit you.) Babe Ruth had a decent fastball (one must) yet he had an array of pitches. Now I want to know why Shoeless wasn’t pitching - at least in relief.
I recall Landis said “knowing of and not telling is as bad as taking money” so you’re right - there should have been some deliberation yet again, you’ve got the Chicago Mob as your primary witnesses.
If the film “Eight Men Out” can be used as a cite, the sportswriters had heard the rumours and noted sloppy misplay. As I recall, there was only one chance where Jackson maybe could have nailed a base-hit runner from taking second for a double, that the reporters noted. Perhaps too harsh - is that even on youtube?
I don’t believe he took the money. It seems obvious he knew what was going on yet did not participate. He was a great player. How much money can you pay Lou Gehrig or Babe Ruth to make some misplays?
It’s a noble cause.
I’m trying to show there is some light between players who knew about the Chicago Mob Fix - likely all of them and players who intentionally made errors or lackadaisical play, swung at pitches way out of the strike zone, i.e. those fully in on and participating on “the fix” and took the money -v- those like Jackson who played as good as one can. As I wrote, his .375 batting average has not been surpassed in 114 years (I assume there is some number of at bats required so the guy who hits a triple, homer and doesn’t bat again isn’t 1.000)
How could a champion player like Jackson have approached his manager and informed him the Chicago Mob had put the fix in? How could he ever have a career after being a “rat”?
I understand this, but that’s just window dressing. The “research” is laughable. Certainly, there are all kinds of museums in the world for trivial things, I have no issue with them calling themselves that. But I just take issue with the argument that they have some important social mission or obligation to include all the history of the sport. Their motto should be, “hey we really love baseball, come nerd out with us about it.”
The difference being that Cobb was fast and Rose was not. Rose attempted 347 stolen bases in his career and was caught 149 times. That’s a 57% success rate. Charlie Hustle was Charlie Slow as Molasses Going Uphill in January. Yeah, Rose accumulated a lot of hits over his too long career, but the truth is that Rose isn’t even one of the 50 best players of all-time.
I don’t really care at this point if he’s voted into the Hall of Fame. It’ll be a backdoor induction by some committee that shouldn’t exist in the first place.
Ehh, the nickname was not ever meant to connote his speed, anyway.
The legend goes that either Mickey Mantle or Whitey Ford affixed it to him during a spring training game in 1963, either when he sprinted to first base after drawing a walk during a spring training game, or when he made two head-first slides while running the bases as a pinch-runner. Either way, it appears that it was originally a derisive nickname for his excessively aggressive, “always-on” style of play, but Rose obviously embraced it.
He’s still #1 on the all-time MLB hit list, and #2 on the career doubles list, but is only #75 on the career triples list. He was really good at base hits, but yeah, apparently not much in the way of speed or power (he averaged only 7 home runs a year). I don’t know enough about him to know about his defensive skills; he did win two Gold Gloves, fairly early in his career, when he was primarily a right fielder.
Wow. I never really thought of him as a prodigious base-stealer, yet his infamous collision with Catcher Fosse in the All Star game had me think that 2nd basemen (at least) would fear this guy coming yet it seems they would have had plenty of time to cleanly tag him out unless Rose (likely) barrelled into them and punched them in the face.
Anything below 65% is definitely hurting your team. I wonder if his managers for some reason always gave him the green light and how many caught-stealing were as player-manager.
So the GOAT is of course Rickey Henderson - 1,406 ~81%
followed by
Tim Raines 808 ~85%
Vince Coleman 752 ~81%
Lou Brock 938 ~75%
Those were like a walk = double guys. Plus the intangibles of how they’d mess with the pitcher, catcher and infielder’s minds.
I recall Tim McCarver would often say “speed slows the game” or somesuch.
And, he wasn’t. Not only did Rose have a poor success rate in stealing bases, but he didn’t try to steal particularly often; on average, he stole 9 bases in a season, and was caught stealing 7 times. There was only one season in which he attempted 30+ steals (1979, when he stole 20, and was thrown out 11 times).
Today, with managers having access to advanced stats (and making use of it), the minimum is more like 75%. But, 50 years ago, managers were generally willing to tolerate lower success rates on stealing. I doubt that Rose ever had an always-on green light (Henderson’s one of the few who did), so much as he might have attempted steals despite being told not to.
Also, no, he wasn’t attempting steals much as a player-manager. In 2+ years in that role with the Reds (1984-86), he stole 11 bases, and was thrown out once.
That collision was a perfect example of the negative connotation of his “Charlie Hustle” nickname: he ran over (and seriously injured) the opposing catcher in an exhibition game. He wanted to succeed at all costs, even in meaningless situations, and if that meant injuring another player, he had no remorse over it. IMO, he was a selfish bastard on the field.
I heard it was when he tried to catch a home run which soared 30 feet over his head as the two Yankees in question chuckled to themselves.
Recall that a lot of stolen bases & caught stealings in the days of yore were failed hit-and-runs (pretty much an extinct strategy now), not straight steals. He also was notable for getting tons of leg doubles; he ALWAYS rounded first planning to go to 2nd unless the defense played it perfectly.
[hijack] I was once watching a White Sox game where Carlton Fisk stole second. They flashed on the screen “Has stolen at least 1 base in each of the last 2 seasons” [/hijack]
I realize that the top 50 players of all time is a selective list, but ESPN put him at #34, and Sporting News has him at #25.
The guy averaged over a hit a game and had a lifetime batting average of .303. He’s on my top 50 list, FWIW.
For what it’s worth, and recognizing that Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is not a perfect measure (especially when applied to older statistics), Baseball Reference ranks Rose at #66 on bWAR (a 79.6), among all players; the guys who are immediately around him on bWAR are Justin Verlander (still active), Jeff Bagwell, Curt Schilling, and Clayton Kershaw (still active). Among position players, Rose ranks at #41.
Rose obviously has Hall-of-Fame worthy numbers, but mostly as an accumulator. The greatest singles hitter ever, along with Ichiro. He was crap defensively and a lousy baserunner. No statistic tells the whole story, but his lack of power leaves him with an adjusted OPS+ of 118, alongside players like Don Baylor, Paul Konerko, Howard Johnson and Ken Griffey, sr..