I’m not going to complain about it, because Rose occupies approximately 0% of my interest.
However, I do feel that it’s a pathetic cop out for the Hall of Fame to tie their selection process to the MLB Commissioner. Whether or not a person should be allowed to have a position of responsibility on a MLB team is entirely different than whether or not they should be allowed to have a plaque in a museum.
We could have inducted his gambling ass into the Hall in 1992, and enjoyed nearly 30 years of not having to think about him again.
Which, in fact, Manfred made very clear in his 2015 statement.
The HOF decision to prohibit players on the permanent ineligibility list from being elected was understandable at the time; it was going to be embarrassing if Rose was elected, would have caused a rift with MLB, and would seem weird to a lot of fans. Most baseball fans
Do not know the Hall of Fame isn’t owned by MLB, and
Wouldn’t care to discern between the two issues.
I don’t think I am being unreasonable or elitist when I say a great many fans haven’t really acquainted themselves with the facts or logic of the Rose case and would react to “he’s in the Hall but can’t work in MLB” rather badly.
That said, at this point it’s clear you are right. Had Rose gotten his plaque in 1992, today it wouldn’t be this gnawing issue, and it’d be easier to get cases like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens out of the way which, though being very different cases, are lumped in with Rose in a lot of discussions.
I agree that he needs help but the Hall of fame has more than it’s share of villians. violent criminals, racists/segregationists/klansmen, sexual predators, steroid users, etc. Pete Rose would not be the worst human being in the hall of fame. And he was a better player than most of them.
Baseball never banned Bonds or Clemens. They did not test for steroids for a long time , probably because they wanted fans to come back after the 94 strike and home runs are always popular with fans. They did not officially ban steroids and test for them until 2005.
Yes, but the Commissioner was prevented from doing so sooner by the Players Union. It took a movement by the players themselves to get the Union to allow MLB to start testing. So when you say Baseball, please keep in mind that in this case it was mostly the Union.
As to banning Bonds or Clemens, they never got to the same level of proof as they did for Rose and Rose violated the one most important rule of baseball since the Blacksox scandal.
Much of the time Bonds was cheating, Steroids were not regulated by MLB so no real grounds for a ban.
and as I have mentioned before Gaylord Perry wrote a book about how he cheated by throwing spitballs and other illegal pitches. Don’t recall anyone saying he should not be in the HOF
You’re correct, no one thinks he shouldn’t be in. Almost no one puts throwing spitballs in the same category as lets say steroids. In fact as it takes skill to throw a spitball/cutball I admire his ability to master the throwing of it and the hiding of how he did it.
Not all rule violations are equal. Do you understand that?
yes not all the same but Perry was open about cheating even when he was still a player.
MLB told all the other teams to not comment in public about the Astros punishment. Privately teams have told media members they are very unhappy , they wanted more harsh sanctions.
He can probably fine any team that speaks up. Maybe not $5 mil but they will very likely get fined. Teams have been fined for talking about a player on another team before they become free agents. Normally that costs them $50k-100k If the guy is a free agent they can be talked about in public.
Your last sentence is rather dubious. What’s your basis for that claim?
As for your general point, I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Pete Rose isn’t banned from baseball, or from the Hall of Fame, for being a bad person. I don’t know if he’s a bad person, and I don’t care, and don’t see how it matters.
Red Sox just fired Alex Cora. As a Sox fan, I thought they should have done it yesterday, but good enough. He couldn’t continue effectively as a manager with all that hanging over him.
Pretty much jack all will happen to Beltran. The Mets may fire him (which may actually be doing him a favor) but Manfred has been consistent on players not seeing any repercussions and he was a player when he did it.
Ty Cobb is in the HOF but when he was young he got into a lot of fights and was likely a racist. To his credit after he retired he was strongly in favor of black players in the major leagues.
If you look at the FB hall of fame there is that guy who killed his wife and her friend and also went to prison for robbery and kidnapping.
Football has different and lesser standards than Baseball for the Hall of Fame. But plenty of MLB HOFers were not great people, especially by today’s standards.
Cobb stands out as an asshole even for his time. On top of it, he also bet on baseball and to avoid the scandal of their best player at the time being caught up in gambling the Commish made a deal with him instead.
On the other side Babe Ruth was a fun loving man-child that everyone loved (except Cobb) but in today’s world he would be one scandal after another. He is from so long ago now that I think we agree to let it slide and judge him by the standards of his day?
Joe D. was surly but never did anything wrong. He was worshiped in his day and long after it in fact, especially by my fellow Italian-Americans. Ted Williams was even more surly but again did nothing wrong except feud with the press, but he was also a war hero and flying ace. Hard to judge people of the past.
But Pete violated the rule that was the biggest violation at the time. The warning to not gamble was posted in every locker room. When caught he lied and lied again and again about it. He deserves his ban. I say that as someone that loved the way he played.
There isn’t any real evidence against Cobb, nor Tris Speaker, who was implicated at the same time. I mean, it’s possible he did, I guess, but there is no real evidence of it.
The basis for the accusation was
Dutch Leonard hated Cobb,
He went to Ban Johnson seven years after the fact with a letter he says Cobb wrote, and got Johnson, who also disliked Cobb, to pay him $20,000 for them.
Landis then got shown the letters by Johnson and cut a deal with Cobb and Speaker to resign their jobs as managers.
But the thing is, we have no evidence of any of this. The letters Leonard had were of unclear provenance. Landis wanted Leonard to tell him his side of the story - but Leonard had lost all interest in it because he had his money.
So Landis told them to quit, right? Uh, no… that is not at all what happened. He publically exonerated them, and they actually both played a little longer. I realize it is very often said Landis let them retire, but that just is not what happened; he looked into this in 1926, flat out said here was nothing to it, and they both stayed in baseball two more years. (They were already pretty old.)