Franke: Pete Rose
by Mark Franke
Last week I shocked my wife. I changed my mind. About baseball, of all things.
Specifically, I changed my mind about Pete Rose’s status as ineligible for election to the baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown.
I should admit that I hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to it. My inclination was to give preference to his activities on the field rather than to those off it. After all, basing a Hall of Fame decision on an athlete’s character and behavior would leave those museums sparsely populated. Is there any class of Americans who act more entitled and above the law than professional athletes? OK, there are entertainers and politicians but still. Neither Ty Cobb nor Rogers Hornsby, two of the greatest players of all time, were known for their gentlemanly conduct on or off the field.
The salient point in my mind was whether he bet against his own team. To my knowledge there never was any evidence of this, at least not provable evidence. It wasn’t like the Chicago Black Sox scandal of 1919 but more about those rascals later.
Rose’s being reinstated as eligible by Rob Manfred, commissar of everything baseball, made this the hot topic at places where I hang out. I couldn’t escape the controversy, forcing me to rethink things. Hence my cognitive dissonance.
Other than a friend who is a die-hard Cincinnati Reds fan, nearly everyone opposed Manfred’s ruling. Their reasons were varied but a strong case began to develop in my mind as I heard them out.
First, one argued that he continued to bet as a team manager. Just think how a manager can influence the outcome of a game or, more important to gamblers, the point spread. Player substitutions, pitch calls, baserunning and a whole host of other decisions from the dugout can affect the final result.
Another asked why Rose refused to apologize for his betting and undergo some kind of public penance such as community service. No contrition was ever shown for breaking a well-established rule against betting. A friend who was a baseball insider at this time assured me he was offered this opportunity but told the baseball establishment what they could do with that offer.
The rule-breaking aspect of this was the crux of the matter to most everyone. “Rules is rules,” as the saying goes. The rule is plainly stated as is the penalty for transgression. So why should Pete Rose get a pass?
A friend, perhaps the only person I know who spends more time than I in thinking deeply about the importance of baseball to Americana, reduces the issue to a single word: integrity.
How do we as Americans want to see ourselves? Is it a “win at any cost” mentality that we applaud? Or would we rather pride ourselves in our dedication to opportunity and fair play, as a nation of consensual laws equally applied. Pete Rose may be a hero to the former group but certainly not to the latter.
But back to the Chicago Black Sox scandal. This is rightly understood as a turning point for professional baseball, one that helped launch it as a national pastime. Of course, Babe Ruth’s home runs helped but the stage for a baseball explosion was set by Major League Baseball’s handling of the Black Sox. Charles Fountain, in his excellent book “The Betrayal: The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball,” recounts the history of the investigation and its resolution. The book’s subtitle is not an overreach.
I bring this up because Rob Manfred lifted the lifetime ban on the Black Sox too. Shoeless Joe Jackson clearly is HOF material except for his taking money from gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series. What makes his case interesting is that he took the money and then didn’t deliver. He had an outstanding series at the plate. I guess you could say that he tried to cheat the cheaters, although enough of the other Black Sox made good on their secret pledge to enrich the gamblers.
And that leads to my final point. Gambling is even more of a problem today than in either Rose’s era or in 1919. I watch a lot of baseball during the summer and nearly every half-inning break on the MLB network has a commercial for a gambling operation. One major network, I thankfully forget which one, has given gambling related data during the broadcast of the game.
Worldwide gambling has more than doubled since 2022 to over $500 billion. American sports betting accounts for only $11 billion of that amount but that hardly entitles us to moral bragging rights. Even Juan Soto makes less than that.
Until we come to grips with our sports gambling fascination, the integrity of the game will be suspect. There’s just too much money at play.
Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
Comments...