Pete Rose - Hall or No Hall??

1) Pete Rose would have been in the Hall of Fame by now if he had just come clean initially. Americans are very forgiving when you own up to something, especially if he had admitted he had a gambling problem.

2) No one should need to list any of his stats except 4,256 hits. Absolutely insane. I don't think anyone in their right mind thinks this guy is not Hall worthy based on his career stats.

3) He agreed to the lifetime ban, so that's what he gets. As we all know though, a "lifetime" sentence doesn't always mean that. He could have begged for forgiveness and had that ban lifted by now.

4) Now that he's finally coming clean, I say make him eligible (which means he'll be in the Hall of Fame). If Ty Cobb is in, Pete Rose deserves to be in. Cobb was a mean SOB. Pete just had a gambling problem and a lying problem, well, a tax evasion problem too, but he never did anything mean -- Bud Harrelson deserved it! :)

Rose was supposedly a complete c0ck to many baseball people, and showed disrespect/arrogance to many. Then, upon the scandal he continuously lied to them with overwhelming evidence and apparently his signature showing on the betting cards.

If you blatantly mistreat people, then you reap what you sow when you call on them. Keep him out.

stats wise, he deserves to get in. no question a great player and a great competitor.

if the hall were just about baseball performance he should be in. no doubt some of the guys in there are of questioanable morals. by most accounts ty cobb was a jerk on a variety of levels. a great baseball player, arguably one of the very best.

i see a difference b/t ty cobb and pete rose. cobb's sins never called into question the integrity of the game to the extent you would wonder if maybe the games were fixed, or might be fixed. gambling does exactly that.

we have short memories. the "black sox" scandal caused baseball to lose a lot of fans. some claim, an exaggeration i think, that it nearly killed professional baseball. as a result very strict rules were put into place by judge landis. putting aside everything else, the games need to be honest and fair - not rigged.

rose calls all of that into question. his banning serves a great purpose to show that no one in baseball is above the rules. a .250 batter caught doing what rose did would be banned for life from baseball and everyone would agree. rose should get no special treatment.

what i do not understand is that people here get all incensed about steroid users in track essentially stealing money from the real winners. steroids/drugs in track effect the integrity of the sport and change the results. losers become winners and would be winners lose. i simply do not see how one can be consistent in calling for steroid users in track to be banned, but then support pete rose.

there is a huge difference between a player who is a jerk and one whose actions call into question the results of the game. if you cant trust the results baseball becomes nothing more than a version of professional wrestling.

Hall!

Sam w,

I think you're taking it further than reality. Pete Rose didn't "fix" games. He simply bet on them. No evidence that he ever bet on his team to lose. Evidence also shows he didn't do too well with the betting, so it's pretty doubtful he had any hand in fixing games. I know you didn't say he did, but I'm just making it clear that he didn't.

Could some games be fixed? Possibly. Does the fact that Pete Rose bet on the games lead to that? Only in the sense that if no one bet on baseball there would be no need to fix games, but other than that, no.

Most people aren't saying Rose should be back managing a team. Those who support his enshrinement to the Hall of Fame are just saying that -- that he should be eligible. A .250 hitter, to use your example, won't be considered for the Hall of Fame.

Comparing Rose to steroid users in track is unfair and inaccurate. No evidence exists that he did anything to change the outcome of games other than his trying to make his team WIN (which every manager does). Comparing track steroid users to baseball steroid users is a fair comparison; comparing them to Pete Rose is not.

Dusty Bones wrote:

Ty Cobb, who sharpened his spikes to slide into shortstops and second basemen, is in the Hall.

Pete Rose would never run into a player to hurt him. Especially over something meaningless. Rose is a man of integrity.

Ray Fosse wrote:

Dusty Bones wrote:

Ty Cobb, who sharpened his spikes to slide into shortstops and second basemen, is in the Hall.

Pete Rose would never run into a player to hurt him. Especially over something meaningless. Rose is a man of integrity.

Fosse, you were blocking the plate, and the rules say a player can go right through the catcher to get to the plate if they want.

Flagpole Willy wrote:

Fosse, you were blocking the plate, and the rules say a player can go right through the catcher to get to the plate if they want.

Yea, I've seen replays of that play. Baseball isn't really a person-to-person contact sport. But anyone (especially a catcher) who can't handle a baserunner when he's blocking his path, doesn't have MLB toughness.

I think you are wrong to think Rose deserves the benefit of the doubt. As a kid Charlie Hustle and the Big Red Machine were my heroes. Rose lied about betting on sports at all, lied about betting on baseball, lied about betting on his team, and says he never bet against his team. The Dowd report and baseball concluded he did all. In 1989, the Dowd report produced actual bet slips showing that over just a 3 month period in 1987 Rose placed over 412 bets on baseball. In 2004, Rose admitted he bet on baseball, specifically on his team's games, when he sold his book. Even assuming he never bet against his team, you think late in a game where he had $ on the line that he would'nt go ahead and try to win that game at the expense of the next?? In other words, emptying the bullpen one night to hold a win knowing that it might not be the best in the long term. When Rose was a player/manager he clearly put himself in the lineup to collect hits for personal stats to the detriment of the team, keeping Eric Davis on the bench or in the minors.. Baseball made the rules, Rose knew them, so Rose should not be in the Hall of Fame. His records are, his teammates are, his team is, and some of his memorabila are ... but he is not as an individual.

I would keep him out based on his hair alone.

I would keep him out based on his hair alone.

http://hometown.aol.com/morganakamoe83/images/moe%20howard---7.jpg

1) Gotta go with evidence. NO evidence that he bet against his team.

2) Yes, he definitely put the long term success of his team at risk for short term gain, but given the amount of time he's been out of baseball (his own doing) and the fact he's now coming clean, I say it's time he becomes eligible for The Hall of Fame. I don't think he should be able to manage a team though -- not yet anyway.

3) Rose put himself in the lineup to get the record for hits, of course, but Marge Schott was the owner of the team, and that was their agreement, and it made the team money as he was getting closer. I see nothing wrong with that. If you want to blame anyone there, blame Schott for just looking at the almighty dollar. It's not like he was doing horribly either. In 1984 he hit .286. The following year in which he broke Ty Cobb's record, he hit .264. Not great, but it's not like he was hitting .200. Seems good enough to me considering all he had done to that point.

4) I agree that rules are rules, but rules are made to be broken if the situation warrants it. Selig could say that Rose is still banned from getting a regular salary in baseball and can have no influence over a team in any way but allow him elegibility for the Hall of Fame. The man is finally coming clean, and what he did wasn't so bad that people can't forgive him. It's not like he killed someone. A Hall of Fame without one of the greatest players ever in it is incomplete.

Flagpole Willy wrote:

The man is finally coming clean, and what he did wasn't so bad that people can't forgive him. It's not like he killed someone. A Hall of Fame without one of the greatest players ever in it is incomplete.

He's coming as clean as he thinks he has to be, to be removed from the ineligible list. First he denied everything, then he gambled but not on baseball, then he gambled on baseball but not on his own team, etc....

There's no reason to think that this latest confession is complete.

And he's hardly one of the greatest players. One of the most durable, obviously. But he was a .303 career hitter with no power and not much speed, and an adequate fielder at best. And I say this as a Phillies fan whose heart was broken multiple times in the 1970s, until Rose joined the team and delivered their only ever World Series victory in 1980.

Dauby wrote:

I've been done with school for almost a year now. I work for a company in downtown Columbus. They are thinking of promoting me to CEO sometime soon. I'm kind of a big deal. :)

I just vomited all over myself.

Next Question wrote:

I just vomited all over myself.

Well, cleaning that up shouldn't be a problem. In all likelihood you're a janitor or work at McDonald's and used to being someone's biznatch.

Who let you out from underneath the stairs anyways?!?

No one from the steroid era will get into the hall of fame. You actually have to be voted in. A million home runs won't automatically get you in if the voters think you did it with a little help. If the voters let Mac and Bonds in there will be a lot of heat to let other cheaters like Rose in.

I'm all for Rose being in the hall.

Alan

The problem I have with Pete Rose's gambling has nothing to do with the morality of gambling (I could care less if someone chooses to gamble themselves into debt). Pete Rose did two things, as a manager, that are unforgivable. He would call other managers on a particular day, find out who was going to be in the lineup (basically insider information), and then place bets on the relevant games after the phone calls.

He also placed bets on the team he was managing. Even if you believe his claim that he only bet on the Reds to win, there is still a chance that his bets affected how he managed his games. According to the Dowd report and Rose's own recent admission of gambling, Rose would bet on his team a couple of times a week during the regular season. In other words, he would bet on some games but not others. As anyone who closely follows baseball knows, a manager does not manage every regular season game as a "must win" situation. During a regular season game, for example, a manager might pull a starting pitcher after 120 pitches even though leaving the pitcher in would give him a better chance of winning that particular game. The pulling of the pitcher saves the pitcher's arm and improves the team's chances of greater success throughout the season. But if Pete Rose has a bet placed on a particular game (but not the next couple of games), his decision making could be distorted; he might keep the pitcher in a little longer than he should. He might have managed his "gambling" games more like playoff games, which would have been to the long-term detriment of his team.

Do we know for a fact that Pete Rose changed his managing strategies when he had a bet on a particular game? Of course not. We can only suspect it. But that's the point--if you bring gambling into baseball, you cast a pall of suspicion on the entire sport. At least with performance enhancing drugs (and lets not forget that Mays, Aaron, and probably Rose himself took illegal stimulants during their playing days), we believe that the players are trying to win. With gambling, there is the question of whether the game's participants are actually fixing the game in the interest of a predetermined outcome--and I think that's the biggest sin in all of sports.

Pete Rose deserves his lifetime ban from baseball. So, induct him into the Hall of Fame...after he dies.

DUDE!!! You've got to look at the man in his prime. He had 200 hits or more in 10 seasons and had 198 hits two other times!!! His batting average for those 12 seasons (almost a career for many players was .321, and he had another season that didn't fall into those 12 when he hit .325! The fact that a guy at the top of the order also had 1314 RBIs is crazy. Three batting titles and finished 2nd two other times including as late as 1981 with your Phillies! Dude was a GREAT player. 2nd all time in doubles.

Only his longevity brought that average DOWN to .303.

Flagpole Willy wrote:DUDE!!! You've got to look at the man in his prime. He had 200 hits or more in 10 seasons and had 198 hits two other times!!! His batting average for those 12 seasons (almost a career for many players was .321, and he had another season that didn't fall into those 12 when he hit .325! The fact that a guy at the top of the order also had 1314 RBIs is crazy. Three batting titles and finished 2nd two other times including as late as 1981 with your Phillies! Dude was a GREAT player. 2nd all time in doubles.

Only his longevity brought that average DOWN to .303.

Sounds like you're trying to have it both ways. If you're going to give him credit for cumulative accomplishments like # of hits, you have to accept that he was a .303 hitter. If you want to focus on his prime, would he have racked up enough numbers in just those years to warrant induction? Maybe yes, but then that's the argument you need to make.