I take issue with your initial claim that other MLB players/managers/coaches have been betting on baseball games for the past 20 years.
It’s a rather stupid claim to make for two simple reasons:
The rule against betting on baseball is posted in every clubhouse in the majors and has been for a good number of years, so no player can claim that they had no idea it was against the rules to do so.
The fact that the officals of MLB showed no compunction or reservations about banning Pete Rose, despite his being so beloved by the fans, (However stupid that love is is another debate) and despite the outcry and upheavbal they knew it would cause, it showed that MLB was not going to stand for anyone breaking the rule against gambling, even if it was Pete Rose.
A way of putting “The Fear of God” into the players and I have no problems with it.
Roses’s scummy attitude was kept mostly hidden during his playing days and his real self only surfaced after he was banned, when he called Commissioner Fay Vincent as “That cripple.”
Rose ranks right up there with Mike Tyson on the list of classless individuals.
I find TartPops’s second point especially convincing.
Rose has so thoroughly proven himself a total scumbag since 1989 that people seem to forget that at the time, he was a baseball demigod. He was (rightly) held up as an example for kids to follow the way he played the game, hustling and running on every single play. He personified baseball in Cincinnati. Major League Baseball’s decision to throw him out would be roughly equivalent to the NFL banning Joe Montana or the NBA tossing Michael Jordan.
This wasn’t a case where the majors tossed a known jackass like Albert Belle or Chad Curtis, or like the NHL suspending a thug like Marty McSorely. They banned an ICON. If they were ever going to hush up a player’s gambling it would have been Pete Rose.
But Rose had taken things to a bannable level. As another poster pointed out in the other thread, if a player were to bet his buddy a case of beer that his team would win tonight, MLB’s not going to be concerned about that. Shit, I bet that happens every day; after all, we’re talking about pro athletes, who are inherently competitive. We’re talking about people who hold grudges over who wins in playing video games. But Rose wasn’t just making friendly bets, he was gambling at a professional level, on a massive scale, with bookies. He was way, way beyond the point where it becomes a concern.
So to answer the OP, there isn’t any reputable evidence that any other player in the last FIFTY years was gambling on baseball like that. Remember that this is a sport that has threatened Hall of Famers with temporary suspension just for doing promotional work for a casino.
I just saw an interview where he explained away his betting as “everyone does it” and that it is a pattern that starts way back when coaching little-league.
Sounded like BS to me.
He did a bad thing and took a decade and a half to admit he was wrong.
And of course it’s pure coincidence that he comes clean at the same time he has a new book coming out that covers all of this.
:rolleyes:
Personally, I say leave him out of the Hall of Fame. He’s only doing any of this because his finances would improve markedly if he were let back into baseball–as it stands, he can’t take any job in the majors or affiliated minors, can’t represent any club, and has to feed his family off his income at card shows.
I think he has screwed himself now. No way will he get back in baseball, which is what he really wants. As for managing? Not a chance. He had better make out really well on this book, because I think it’s his last shot at income generated from baseball.
And yeah, they are making an example of him–rightly so. If you were a player back then, wouldn’t you be questioning every move he had made as a your manager? Was it for the good of the team, or was it for the good of Pete, or was he just distracted, wondering what was going on in some of the games he had bets riding on?