MIKE BURKE

Allegany Communications Sports

 

The death of Pete Rose is the latest, the saddest and final chapter in the life and legacy of Major League Baseball’s hit king and holder of countless records and deserved accolades.

Of course, with Pete Rose, even in death, you just never know.

News of the 83-year-old Rose’s death on Monday hit the baseball world hard for a number of reasons, particularly those who knew him, loved him and who were his teammates, friends and fans. But it also hit the average baseball fan hard for many of the same reasons:

Nobody played the game harder, better or happier than Pete Rose. He was an absolute joy to watch. Yet as former MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent, then-Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti’s right-hand man at the time of Rose’s banishment, said, “The ultimate tragedy is the one that he experienced, because he had all sorts of blessings and advantages and talents, and to end up living a life for the past 35 years that was so frustrating and abysmal must have been a terrible sentence for him.

“At the end, how can you not feel very sorry for a guy who suffered from sort of a human failing, which is an excessive belief in his infallibility, and he kept testing that … Kept being punished, and he never got a lesson. The lesson was, ‘stop doing what you’re doing.’

While it seems such poor taste to raise the issue so soon after his death, whether or not the MLB banishment of Pete Rose for gambling on baseball while he was the manager of the Cincinnati Reds should be lifted has been a major topic of conversation, because for the last 35 years so many people, beginning with Rose, have been trying to get him into baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Ron Oester, a former Reds teammate, said this week, “Just my opinion, but it’s pretty sad that baseball has embraced gambling but didn’t embrace Pete after making a mistake gambling on baseball. Especially after everything Pete did for the game.”

The great Thomas Boswell, who covered Rose’s career for the Washington Post, wrote in 2015 on the occasion of MLB denying a Rose appeal for reinstatement, “Let’s make one thing clear. Rose in the Hall is thinkable and debatable. Rose reinstated in baseball, even at 73, is wrong and an idea to dismiss quickly.

“By accident, Cooperstown and reinstatement are linked. In 1991, Hall voters decided that anyone on the game’s ‘permanently ineligible’ list couldn’t be on the Hall ballot; Rose constitutes that entire list. That rule could, in theory, be changed, allowing a still-banned Rose into the Hall.

“But the idea that Rose should ever be a member in full standing of the baseball community is a cruel inversion of justice.”

Boswell suggested the rule could be changed, which is true because it was created with Pete Rose specifically in mind, as the Hall adopted it 1-1/2 years after Rose agreed to the lifetime ban with MLB, and the same year that he would have become eligible to be on the ballot for the first time.

“It was obviously aimed at Pete Rose,” broadcaster Bob Costas said on Tuesday, “and from that day forward and to today, my position, the position of millions of others is, yeah, we get it, he broke the cardinal rule. He should be banned from baseball under that rule for life. But somebody got those 4,256 base hits and those three batting championships. Put him in the Hall of Fame, put it at the bottom of his plaque ‘banned from baseball 1989, for life.’ It’s part of the record, but he should be in as a player.”

Truth is, while Rose’s banishment 35 years ago has often been referred to as a lifetime ban, Rose agreed to permanent ineligibility from MLB following a probe of his betting on the game.

Many have speculated that his death would lead to the ban being lifted, but that won’t be the case until, or unless, Commissioner Rob Manfred decides to lift it.

Given Manfred’s comments through Rose’s previous appeals, that doesn’t seem likely to happen.

When Commissioner Giamatti announced the banishment on August 24, 1989, he began his statement, “The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is the sad end of a sorry episode. One of the game’s greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts. By choosing not to come to a hearing before me, and by choosing not to proffer any testimony or evidence contrary to the evidence and information contained in the report of the Special Counsel to the Commissioner, Mr. Rose has accepted baseball’s ultimate sanction, lifetime ineligibility.”

Giamatti, who died of heart failure the following week, concluded by saying, “The matter of Mr. Rose is now closed. It will be debated and discussed. Let no one think that it did not hurt baseball. That hurt will pass, however, as the great glory of the game asserts itself and a resilient institution goes forward. Let it also be clear that no individual is superior to the game.”

Pete Rose agreed to live with the consequences of his actions, and he did, though his hurt never passed. Sadly, just like those 4,256 hits, three batting titles and every head-first slide, Pete Rose earned it.

 

Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT

 

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