Pete Rose dead at 83

The Game Room
81

I wanted to correct this, having just re-read it. I think I am wrong here, or may be wrong.

A more obvious explanation for Rose writing himself into the lineup when he was old and no good anymore is just that he couldn’t stand to not play baseball. I am reminded of Rickey Henderson, who refused to retire and kept playing minor league ball after no MLB would sign him because he simply loved playing and didn’t know what else to do. To someone like Rose… I mean, being an MLB player is all he had ever been. It was the only job he’d ever had, it was his life and identity. To give that up is to give up who you ARE, to move into a life you have no familiarity with, no anchor, none of the structure you have now spend your whole adult life living within. I think I can understand why one would be unable to let go.

82

That, and being a gambler. He could have given up baseball and taken up gambling full time if he needed something to do

83

I think there may have been a dose of self-delusion as well, contributing to his staying in the game. It’s usually the greats that have the hardest time knowing when to quit, because in their career they’ve had so many downs followed by incredible ups that they don’t recognize that any variation going foward is going to be modulated by a basic physical decline that they simply cannot stop, no matter how well they take care of themselves. They may feel they are “in the best shape ever”, they may be doing those things that help more faithfully than they ever have in the past, but in the end there’s only so much they can do to keep time from taking its toll.

The players who can retire, and stay retired, while at the top of their game are few and far between, and it’s so common to hold on too long that I’m not sure we should really hold it against those players. Though front offices should look at things with a less-jaundiced eye, and various loudmouths and opinion leaders probably shouldn’t trot out the cliche that Player X “deserves to go out on thier own terms.”

I’m reminded of Earl Weaver, who wrote that his first move after being made player-manager in the minor leagues was to bench a second baseman named Earl Weaver, someone who loved the game but simply wasn’t going to make the majors as a player. His postretirement return to the Orioles showed that it was hard even for someone with that kind of move in his background to not try to take one more crack at glory. Probably those players who are more marginal, not HoF quality, have a better idea of their own limitations and know they aren’t going play forever view their eventual change in life circumstance with more equanimity, and perhaps plan for it better over time.

But I would agree that it’s incredibly hard for someone who’s put their entire life up to that point into the game to stop it all. As Jim Bouton ended Ball Four, “You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end, it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”

84

He was chasing Ty Cobb’s hits record. He couldn’t get the record if he wasn’t in the lineup, so he put himself in the lineup. In the leadoff position IIRC.

85

As was noted upthread (which, to be fair, was months ago), he continued playing/managing (and putting himself into the lineup) for another year after he passed Cobb in September of 1985.

He had been traded back to the Reds in August of 1984, and became player-manager at that point, His performance in 1984 and 1985 was comparable to what it has been in '82 and '83 – he was no longer a .300 hitter, but he was still producing (a bit above “replacement level”).

However, even after he passed Cobb, he kept playing, even though (a) he already had the record, and (b) his play was substantially worse in 1986 than it had been in '84 and '85.

87

The scandal hurt me more because Pete Rose was an outstanding player. He set so many MLB records.

For a player and coach of that stature to be found morally corrupt stings. I wasn’t a big baseball fan. Even I followed his later career in the papers.

I’m conflicted about the HOF. The players already in weren’t choir boys. Maybe it’s time, that Rose gets in posthumously. He’s not going to do anything else to embarrass MLB.

88

Well, sure, but that’s true of most of humanity.

I’m conflicted about it, for a different reason.

Baseball – and the other major sports – had, for over 100 years, had a zero-tolerance policy towards players gambling on their sports; in baseball’s case, it was grounds for being declared permanently ineligible. The sports knew that they would be heavily damaged if fans could not trust that the results of games were not influenced by gamblers.

Rose was fully aware of this rule, and despite this, not only did he bet on baseball, he bet on his own games (though, he claimed, only betting on his own teams to win).

But, now, with MLB, and the other major North American sports, freely accepting sponsorships (and money) from sports gambling websites, their anti-gambling stance is more than a little hypocritical, IMO.

(And, of course, in the years that followed his ban, Rose continued to associate with gamblers, dissembled on what he might or might not have actually done, and was just generally kind of a sad asshole. This, despite the fact that, as @RickJay eloquently wrote, baseball was his entire life, and after his banning, Rose spent the rest of his days desperately pining to be allowed back into the baseball community, and to receive “his due” by being voted into the Hall.)

89

I don’t know how his pay structure would have worked at the time, but would he have been paid more when he played in the game? If so, that might be an even more obvious explanation. My impression of Pete, especially in his later years, was that he was motivated by smaller amounts of money than you’d imagine.

Then again, that sounds like an even bigger conflict for a player-manager, so I could be wrong.

90

Probably not.

Baseball players receive an annual salary while they’re on the roster (even if injured, inactive, or benched). Unless a player has a specific bonus written into his contract that kicks in when he plays X number of games in a season, he’d make the same amount if he started 162 games, or only appeared in one game, so long as he was under contract, on the team, and not suspended.

91

There isn’t much evidence that the players already in were as morally disgusting and bankrupt as Rose was. The gambling is a non-starter - there’s no excuse for it. If for some reason someone wants to be an apologist for the gambling and the decades of lying about the gambling, I’d ask them to please continue on and offer the apologist’s excuse for his child molestation and statutory rape.

92

Paraphrasing Bill James: “The people who want to put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame are baseball’s answer to the women who show up at murder trials wanting to marry the cute murderer”. Fuck that guy.

93

Irony in dropping Bill James’ name in this thread when he has been on record as being a Rose apologist. Cite from the former’s Wikipedia page.

94

Fuck, you’re right. That quote was about Joe Jackson. I am covered in shame.

95

Not to the degree Jackson is.

96

No. Players can have performance bonuses related to such things but Rose didn’t.

97

James’s defense of Rose is that he did not think the evidence against him was convincing - not that the act was acceptable.

Of course Rose after that ended up admitting he did it.

98

It really affected me in that Pete Rose was my favorite player when I was growing up. I was born in 73, before cable and satellite television could show you games from virtually any market. I grew up about 90 minutes away from Cincinnati, so the Reds were my team at the time. When Rose went to Philadelphia, I became a Philly fan.

When he went to Montreal, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t conceive of rooting for the National Pastime in a foreign country.

Luckily, that was when I was introduced to Wrigley Field, and I’ve been a diehard Cub fan since. But Rose always had a special place in my heart.

99

When I was a kid, my parents bought a copy of Pete Rose Pennant Fever. It was amusing that Rose was easily the best player in the game (even though it came out well after his decline) and that they didn’t otherwise have a MLBPA license, so all the other players were fake. Apparently it was groundbreaking for 1988, though I wasn’t very good and put all the players in auto mode for fielding. I wonder how much money he made off a fairly obscure baseball simulator.

100

Will Rose make it to the Hall of Fame? A brilliant player, and it is getting harder for the MLB to complain about gambling when pro sports gave so embraced it…

Limited gift link:
https://wapo.st/42XtYvt

Equivalent normal link:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2025/05/13/mlb-reinstates-pete-rose/

101

Link on ESPN (should not be paywalled):