According to this story, he did publicly apologize at least once. I’d never heard of this until I googled it.
Crappier? Hardly. I don’t know the figures, but assuming blacks made up 10% of the US population, then the quality of play would’ve been deceased by 10%, diminishing the level of quality that I would guess would not be apparent to most of the population. IMHO. Excuse the hijack. Back to Pete Rose.
And assuming Rose’s apology was sincere, and then I’d be inclined to forgive him his baseball related gambling sins. He’s still and SOB, but he wouldn’t be the only one of them in the Hall.
It’s only an “edge” if ALL the inferior players were on the other teams. Otherwise, players in the pre-integration era were HURT by the lack of black players as often as they were helped.
You’re assuming that, say, Grover Cleveland Alexander wouldn’t have had such great stats if he’d had to face black hitters. But mightn’t HIS teams have had some quality black players, too? Maybe if he’d had an Ozzie Smith at shortstop behind him, he’d have given up FEWER hits. Maybe if he’d had a Hank Aaron in his lineup, he might have won MORE games.
Maybe Babe Ruth would have had MORE runs batted in if the Yanks had a speedy leadoff man like Rickey Henderson.
Maybe Ty Cobb would have scored MORE runs if the Tigers had a Willie Mays batting behind him.
Far as I know, Willie never hated anybody.
Bet he would have made an exception for Cobb!
Nobody has taken away Rose’s MVP Award, so what’s the connection there?
[QUOTE=astorian]
It’s only an “edge” if ALL the inferior players were on the other teams. Otherwise, players in the pre-integration era were HURT by the lack of black players as often as they were helped.
You’re assuming that, say, Grover Cleveland Alexander wouldn’t have had such great stats if he’d had to face black hitters. But mightn’t HIS teams have had some quality black players, too? Maybe if he’d had an Ozzie Smith at shortstop behind him, he’d have given up FEWER hits.
[/QUOTE]
That’s true on the aggregate. Over the long haul obviously all MLB teams have equal access to all ballplayers, and so in theory, Alexander would have been as likely to be assisted by superior ballplayers as he would be to be beaten by them.
However, that’s in terms of Alexander’s likelihood of winning and losing. In terms of his individual stats, there is little doubt players in a non-integrated league would have their individual stats pulled down a bit by integration. It is self-evidently the case that Jackie Robinson was a much, much better ballplayer than whatever scrub was pushed out in favour of him, and it is simply an absolute fact that NL pitchers spent ten years getting their asses handed to them by Robinson. They also did not do so well when Roy Campanella stepped in there, either. In the absence of Robinson, someone would have taken up his at bats who probably would not have had an on base percentage over .400. On the whole, the presence of Jackie Robinson clearly hurts the performance of the average NL pitcher. Certainly, BROOKLYN’s pitchers were thrilled he was playing defense behind them and scoring runs in support of them, but the pitchers on other teams, not so much. And some white guy lost his job entirely.
I don’t know how one can construct a logical argument that the stats of the best players in a league would do anything but decline in the presence of more talent. Of course they would, as evidenced by the fact that the more talent you have, the less variance you have between the best and worst players. In high school ball it’s routine for the best players to bat .600 and such, or pitchers to throw a shutout every second start, because they’re in a smaller pool of talent; as they encounter more talent, their stats become less impressive, even if they remain among the best players.
Of course, I fully expect the same is true in reverse; elite Negro Leaguers did not dominate MLB the way they had the Negro Leagues. For a modern example, Ichiro Suzuki put up better numbers in NPB than he has in MLB. He actually had higher batting averages and substantially more homers in Japan. By joining MLB, Suzuki’s stats flattened slightly, because he was facing more talent - but MLB pitchers’ stats also worsened slightly, because they had to face Ichiro Suzuki instead of an inferior player.
That’s not to say Hall of Famers stop being Hall of Famers. If you took Stan Musial’s career and discounted it about 3% for the fact the league didn’t integrate until 1947 and still wasn’t integrated fully for years after, you know who his stats would look like? Stan Musial. It’d be pretty much the same ballplayer, really.
“Nobody has taken away Rose’s MVP Award, so what’s the connection there?”
Well, such as it is, Pete’s ban for gambling, which AFAIK happened after his active playing days. Braun’s MVP was won while he was using steroids. But it’s not the details I’m looking at, I could well have made the thread about Bonds (et al) not being elected to the HOF. I was just interested in the debate about which impacted the ‘integrity of the game’ more actually, Rose’s gambling, or steroid usage, and the relative penalties exacted upon them.
Both guys cheated and deserved whatever punishments they received, but Rose’s offense was far worse, in my book.
Braun and the steroid users did what they did, for better or worse, in an attempt to improve their performance and win more games. That doesn’t put the integrity of the game in question.
Rose, on the other hand, risked
- Putting himself in a position where he could profit handsomely from losing games on purpose. I now repeat my challenege: how do YOU know he DIDN’T??? You have ONLY Pete’s word for it that he never bet against the Reds, and we now know he lied about not gambling on baseball at all. How can you give ANY creedence to ANYTHING he says?
If Pete knew, say, that the ace pitcher starting the following day was having arm trouble and couldn’t throw very hard in practice, why WOULDN’T he bet heavily against the Reds? And once he had, wouldn’t he have all kinds of incentives to ake SURE they lost?
- Putting himself in heavy debt to bad people, people who could then lean on him to fix games or provide insider information. THAT puts the integrity of the game in danger.
Pete Rose lied for years, claiming he didn’t gamble AT ALL. Then he was like, “oh maybe I did, but I bet on my team, now can I be in the Hall, please please please?” Why should anyone trust him? He signed an agreement, and then spends the rest of his life trying to weasel out of it? We’re not talking like, “hey, whoever strikes out tonight pays for beers after the game” or something like that.
Should any roid users get into the HOF? In my opinion, hell no. But the whole, “yeah, well look what HE did!” argument is the kind of thing we used when we were kids. (Have any of the big names connected with them gotten in yet?)
“But the whole, “yeah, well look what HE did!” argument is the kind of thing we used when we were kids.”
Guin, that’s not the argument I’m trying to make. I get I’m in the minority in this thread. What Rose did (gambling) is different than what the steroid abusers did. I have no evidence he bet against his own team, but maybe he did. I have no evidence he tried to manipulate the outcome of games as a manager due to the bets he made, maybe he did. My POV is that even if he did those things, he likely changed the outcome of far fewer games, less dramatically, than steroid abusers did - whether it was hitting 70 homers in a season, or Gagne for my own beloved Dodgers being unhittable for several years. And of course Rose lied, so did all the steroid abusers.
Rose got nuked from orbit for his gambling - them’s the rules. The steroid abusers get suspended for parts of seasons (ARod gets more). I maintain that ARod did more actual damage to the fabric of the game than Rose. I’m not defending what Rose did. I’m comparing the severity of the consequences levied, and I think it is overly disparate.
I’m not the only one - Mike Trout of the Angels was quoted today as saying active ballplayers who test dirty should get a lifetime ban (like Rose did). Currently they don’t. And I don’t even like Rose.
That’s a subjective call and I’m not sure I agree with it, but maybe you’re right.
I would argue, however, that the threat posed by gambling is vastly, vastly greater than by steroids - orders of magnitude greater. Players taking steroids and grabbing other cheats to try to win does not bring into question the matter of whether or not they are trying to win. MLB remains an enterprise in which its competitors are legitimately attempting to win.
Gambling raises the possibility of the competitors deliberately losing. This was a huge problem in MLB prior to the Black Sox scandal. It is one of the things that helped to kill boxing and horse racing as popular sports. The perception that a sporting contest is not trying to be won by both parties is potentially murderous to the future of the sporting enterprise.
Pete Rose committed what basically amounts to a conflict of interest in his employment. He engaged in a financial enterprise that directly conflicted with his duties as en employee. I don’t know what kinda company you guys work for, but in mine, if I were to be found in a conflict of interest, I would be terminated at once and never hired back for as long as I lived. That is what I would expect to happen in ANY reputable business. It’s nothing personal. It’s what an enterprise has to do to protect itself; you just can’t have a sense of humour about that.
Obviously, both are terrible for the game. For myself, If (big IF) Rose never bet against his team, it wasn’t really an actual conflict of interest, I would assume he would manage the same way - he still wants to win every game he manages.
I don’t know about you, but the whole “Home Run Derby” excitement that we felt the summer Sosa and McG were blasting homers in chase of the HR title now feels dirty and cheap, and false, and I think that could damage interest at least almost as much as a case of one idiot betting on his team. I feel the same way, for example, about the “Summer of Mannywood” we enjoyed as Dodgers fans. Widespread gambling would, of course, have exactly the chilling effect on popularity you note. Continued widespread abuse of PEDS would probably cause me regretfully to stop caring about MLB. I would note, also, that heavyweight boxing increased greatly in popularity in the decades immediately following after Clay “knocked out” Liston.
Uncorrupted managers may want to win every game,* but that doesn’t mean they see every win as equally important, or deserving of equal resources, such as in the deployment of relief pitching. Protecting a four-run lead late in this game against a fourth-place team tonight is less significant than than (potentially) protecting a one-run lead, or a tie, against the division leader tomorrow.
If there’s money action, all those calculations are distorted, or thrown right out.
Strictly speaking, I’d say a manager betting on his own team to win is a corrupting incentive in all cases, unless he always bets the same amount, and never bets for or against any other team. Then I suppose it might be a wash–but I doubt anyone bets that way.
- In leagues that play split-season schedules it is sometimes possible to construct scenarios on which it is to a team’s advantage to lose certain games.
Okay, lets forget Pete Rose. Let’s pretend that, oh, Don Mattingly has a gambling problem, and he’s been betting heavily on his Dodgers to win (lately, that’s been a dang good bet).
What happens if he drops 500 grand on a game because one of his normally reliable pitchers has an off night and gets shelled?
You don’t think that wiseguys are going to have a lot of leverage over him?? Do you not see the danger in having players or managers in debt to the Mob?
That’s something baseball can’t afford. And it’s why, though Mattingly was one of my favorite players ever, I’d support banning him for life if he were betting on games, even if he were always betting ON the Dodgers.
I agree in principle with both of the above posts. I guess it boils down to a subjective judgement call about which evil is eviler. Marley humorously commented on ‘how much power does a manager actually have to effect the outcome?’ (we would agree it is not a null value). He would also judge that Mays and Mantle were sanctioned too harshly for being greeters at casinos (and I would agree). It just feels viscerally that PEDS and the examples I gave above damaged *my *feelings about baseball, and violated the integrity of the game for me, more than Rose’s gambling. I think Manny, and Arod, and Braun, and all the dirty rest, all ought to get at least what Rose got. They got less, and I think at least partly that’s because they are the product that puts butts in bleachers, so effect the owner’s bottom line. Rose earned his MVP, and potential HOF election, for actions as a ballplayer, not primarily as a manager. Say what you will about the man, he was a hella ballplayer, and his accomplishments as a player are not in doubt. His choice when he was manager to bet on baseball was obviously terrible and should have been severely sanctioned.
As to Astorian’s example with Mattingly, I’d argue that Arod and the rest are all also just as subject to blackmail etc to the same degree if threatened with exposure of their violations of baseball’s antidoping rules.
I think this has a lot to do with what you can see and what you can’t see. You can see the effects of PEDs, at least indirectly. The manager doesn’t even play the game and you can’t see what influences his decisions, so it feels further removed. I think that can make it seem less dirty- but it isn’t.
“Strictly speaking, I’d say a manager betting on his own team to win is a corrupting incentive in all cases.”
I agree. I’d also posit that this is absolutely no less true for every swing by a juiced batter, or every pitch by a juiced pitcher.
I think you are right. I’m just not convinced that it is so much dirtier as the inequity of the sanctions applied seems to suggest.
Both gambling and PEDs are serious corruptions of the game, and I support very harsh sanctions for both.
Drug penalties so far have been moderated by the fact that the enforcement regime had to be negotiated with a recalcitrant Players Association. At first there was no suspension for a positive “survey” test. Then it was, what, ten or fifteen games for a first offense? Now it’s 50. And the culture of active players is shifting; I’ve heard several say openly that 50 games is not enough. We may see enforcement tighten further in the next CBA.
Both players and owners are recognizing that the perception of a “clean” game will be worth more to the bottom line than any enhanced performance.