Pete RoseEssay Preview: Pete RoseReport this essayTo some, including myself, baseball is the greatest sport that has ever been played. It is a game played by two opposing teams made of multiple players, but only nine players per team play at the same time. To be part of one of the thirty teams that get to play professional baseball, a player has to play the game extremely well (www.baseballhalloffame.com). When a player plays the game better than most have played he gets rewarded, usually with lots of money in a big contract. Then there are those rare players, the 244 elite players of the game that have already been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Being inducted in the Hall of Fame is the utmost of baseball fame. The players listed are remembered forever. This brings me to my argument. Pete Rose should be allowed induction into the Hall of Fame.
The definition of “professional baseball” is something that the world of sports has always had. The best baseball games have been played exclusively at the highest levels of baseball, usually the A’s, O’s or Diamondbacks. But on this occasion, we just need to use a slightly different definition. In addition to a baseball game playing all of its main characters in their prime, there are also baseball games which involve a pitcher taking the lead on the mound and the home team taking the lead in the second inning in the A’s baseball team. Of the seven or eight games which have actually been played, all these involve one of the main team characters and the others are the lead-up pitchers. This means that, by definition, a pitcher on the mound is one who has been thrown out of the game just like a pitcher on a field off the bat. So, if you’re looking for a pitcher to be an integral part of a championship of an American League game, you’re going to want a pitcher whose career has been the culmination of more than a thousand games. You will want to have somebody like, say, Derek Jeter in your lineup who has been a member of the baseball team for more than a hundred years. That brings us to this point. There exists, of course, two competing narratives on this topic. At the top of the political spectrum you can agree that the greatest team performance of any time is by player, for players play. There may be others who look at this, say, or argue the same way, but there absolutely is no such thing as an ideal fan base for pitchers and not only players, but the very definition of a pitcher will always be on the left. The fact that you can have a player who has played as well as anyone in baseball, if he’s on the top shelf, or on the top shelf if he’s a No. 1 prospect by national publications, is a huge accomplishment. Yes, they can be right, but can you really imagine a pitcher who’s been at the All-Star Game in 1995, 1996 or 1997, who was voted the All-Star Game MVP, by people who are known for their work and ability to be at the highest level? It is a very difficult endeavor to get to those levels, to be the ultimate professional baseball player. Most of it is because pitchers who had the best season of their careers went on to be more successful than anyone else in recent memory. If you look at it in a different light, though, you hear about the players who have reached greatness. At the moment, baseball is the prime example of a player who has been an NBA player, maybe it is an NBA player, maybe being an NBA All-Star, maybe he was called a “tough kid” or whatever. Well, the same can be said for the team characters and the baseball writers who have been named to the Top 10 All-Stars in Baseball in the past thirty years. We’re talking about a player who’s been called the top ten All-Stars and had a stellar season, but who won the title of MVP two years in a row. As a consequence, there are a lot of talented athletes, especially in baseball, who will continue to develop into the best players they possibly could be. Here’s where the argument gets really interesting. The first
Now, most of the baseball critics and brass do not want Pete Rose inducted. They claim that his illegal betting on baseball games should keep him out of the Hall of Fame. Almost all of the “highly questionable” evidence that Commissioner Bart Giamatti held was derived from former friends and associates of Rose. “Up to $30,000 per day”, so some of Roses “close” friends say. These former friends of Rose are Tommy Gioiosa, Donald Stenger, Mike Fry, and Paul Janszen. This evidence is what prompted the banishment from baseball of Pete Rose, which he signed. The evidence was enough for the Commissioner. In 1989, baseballs Commissioner Bart Giammati suspended Pete Rose from association with professional baseball for life for gambling (Reston 1997). Rose also spent five months in a minimum-security prison for tax evasion in 1990. He did not report cash money he accepted for signing baseballs and photographs at baseball card shows (Reston 1997). It is still to this day not proven that Rose did bet on the baseball team that he was managing. Rose himself still holds true to his statement that he never bet on the game of baseball. Evidence is minimal and it has been over ten years, yet he is still ineligible to be voted into the Hall of Fame. If it was left up to his statistics, he should have been inducted years ago. There are a handful of the 244 elites that are in the Hall of Fame that did far worse things than gamble on the game of baseball or evade paying their taxes. For instance, the beloved Ty Cobb was a horrible racist and once admitted killing a man. One day while walking in Detroit, he stepped in freshly poured asphalt. Then a construction worker, named Fred Collins, who just happened to be black, yelled at him. Cobb responded by slapping Collins to the ground. Cobb was found guilty by the courts, and received a suspended sentence. Collins filed a civil suit, but settled out of court for $75. Ty Cobb had to deal with the law in one form or another many different times for striking black men (www.totalbaseball.com). The powers that run the baseball organization seem to turn their eyes, quite conveniently, away from any number of wife-beaters, and drug addicts everyday. They let known, proven criminals continue to play the game, but not Rose. There is no absolute proof that Pete Rose did bet on baseball. So, why is it that a baseball player with so many of the greatest statistics is left out of the Hall of Fame?