![]() Ordinarily, they honour precisely the same people who are in line for the halls of fame of our various professional sports. On Sunday, the unthinkable happened: Rose was welcomed into Cincinnati’s home park to have his old number officially retired by the Reds. Article content The Associated Press files This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. He is naive, almost simian in his lack of camera discipline, but eager to display his abundant knowledge - to be something other than just a pop-culture curio again. Since last spring, he has been allowed to appear on Fox Sports baseball telecasts. In 2004, Rose admitted he had bet on baseball, though he still insists he never bet against his Reds. They are now too obviously mere CEOs of Major League Baseball (MLB).īaseball commissioners have come and gone, and now, with former MLB attorney Rob Manfred in charge, a crablike rapprochement between Pete Rose and baseball seems to be underway. Commissioners of baseball were once seen as independent public tribunes acting in the common interest of players, fans and owners alike. It becomes harder for them to do it, perhaps, as the innate dignity of their office diminishes. The commissioner practically has to act first in the matter of Rose. And it would be somewhat illogical to maintain that Pete Rose is unfit to coach third base for the Reds, or even to watch a game as the team’s guest, but that he is suitable for baseball’s highest honour. He broke an important rule, which exists for excellent reasons.īut since the rule is important, it is also important to make the incentives against breaking it very powerful. Rose cannot be shown to have betrayed the spirit of baseball, or swindled fans in the way that the “Black Sox” players who threw a World Series did. It is unnatural to have a Baseball Hall of Fame that does not include Pete Rose strictly on baseball merit, or as a part of the game’s memory, roughly 95 of the next 100 people they induct will be less deserving. de Souza on Stan Musial: The true face of sportsmanship Sure, consider Pete Rose for Cooperstown - but he should never be reinstated in baseball.The other path to the Hall of Fame, through the Veterans Committee, was hastily closed when he became eligible for that, too. Article contentĪll of that was foreseeable - but Rose might not have foreseen that, in 1991, the Baseball Writers of America would add a formal rule excluding ineligible-list players from the Hall of Fame ballot. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
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