Pete Rose now has the Devil In His Corner

Hope we can put the Pete Rose saga to bed after this

On the list of the 50 worst things to happen last week, this ranks 92nd, but he dropped it on the baseball-loving public and left us to suffer with it, like a fart in an elevator. I speak of course of our P.O.T.U.S. Donald Trump saying he would be pardoning Pete Rose in the coming weeks. For what? Who knows. The only federal crime he was convicted of was for filing false tax returns and then served 5 months in jail in 1990. He also had a $1million lien placed on him in 2004 for unpaid taxes, which might explain why that’s the year he released My Prison Without Bars, in which he confessed to gambling on baseball. Why will it take “weeks” to pardon him? Who knows.

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Ignoring the absolute butchering of proper English and formatting in that screed, what this has to do with reducing the cost of eggs is beyond me. Why he didn’t do this in his first term, when Pete Rose was still alive? And will this save baseball from “dying all over the place” by getting its “fat, lazy ass” to elect him to the Hall of Fame?

It makes total sense that Donald Trump is a Pete Rose fan. They both did whatever it took to “win”, regardless of the cost to other people (in Rose’s case it was Ray Fosse’s career, in Trump’s case it was every contractor who ever worked on his buildings). They’re both tax cheats. They both made lots of money playing the victim card while taking zero responsibility for their own actions, and using that god-like hold over their fans to suck up every last dollar they can give (Rose would sign balls for $99 or more for decades, Trump will sell whatever shit has his name on it, even steaks, sneakers and NFTs). They both had terrible haircuts. Oh, and they both have a sleazy, predatory preference for teenage girls. The only difference is one was Charlie Hustle, the other is so fat and lazy he parks his golf cart on the green (he needed a hacked Fitbit that counted escalator rides as steps so he could win the office pool… allegedly). Never forget this gem: Out of step: G7 leaders take a stroll, Trump takes a golf cart

They walked the 700 yards from the traditional G7 group photo, taken at a Greek amphitheater, to a piazza in the hilltop town, but Mr. Trump stayed behind until he could take a seat in the electric vehicle.

So now that we have to spend the next little bit dealing with this, let’s take a quick look at the whole Pete Rose saga and put it to rest for good.

Pete Rose was one of the greatest baseball players ever

That goes without saying. The back of his baseball card presents an undeniable case for unanimous Hall of Fame enshrinement. He holds the all-time record with 4,256 hits, he also has more games played and plate appearances than anyone in MLB history. He won the 1963 NL Rookie of the Year award, the 1973 NL MVP, three batting titles and three World Series championships (including the 1975 World Series MVP). He also won the Roberto Clemente Humanitarian Award in 1976, which aged about as well as OJ Simpson’s 1987 Boys’ Club of America award.

His style of play was riveting. He would barrel around the bases and chase down line drives without a care for his well-being in a style that hasn’t been fully replicated since. Given how much of his career was played on the first generation of Astroturf, the kind that was a thin layer of carpet on top of concrete, getting through 24 seasons is an astonishing feat. It’s impossible to find a picture of Pete Rose pulling into a base standing up.

There’s a reason Pete Rose’s name comes up so often whenever I interview people who grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s. He and Willie Mays are the players that were idolized the most. It makes sense, given how awesome their styles of play look on television, back when there were only three channels and the country’s national baseball diet consisted of one broadcast per week until the World Series. He didn’t have the athleticism of Mays, physique of Mantle or movie star mug of Sandy Koufax. He looked more like the pudgy dork in high school who played bass guitar at the Grange on Friday nights.

But for every kid across America who struggled to keep up as the fastballs got faster, the fences got further away, and their throws across the infield took more and more hops to get to first base, they could look at Pete Rose and think, ‘if I can just will myself around the bases like him, I could be a Major Leaguer.’ When you grow up with that kind of wonderment and fascination with your idol, he can do no wrong. Which is why he still, 35 years after his ban from the sport, commands such a devoted cult following among fans from that generation. But…

He committed baseball’s most unforgivable sin

PEORIA, AZ - MARCH 6 2016: A note in regards to Rule 21 are posted in the clubhouse prior to a spring training game between the Oakland Athletics and the San Diego Padres at the Peoria Sports Complex on March 6, 2016 in Peoria, Arizona. (Photo by Michael Zagaris/Oakland Athletics/Getty Images)

He bet on baseball. He bet on games he was in. That’s the one rule you can’t break. And it’s not like he wasn’t aware. Pete Rose was born in 1941, 22 years after the Black Sox Scandal that resulted in eight players being permanently banned from the sport for allegedly throwing the World Series in 1919. Pete Rose was caught and banned for life in 1989. Every commissioner since then has denied his bid for reinstatement. The BBWAA and Baseball Hall of Fame have taken their cue from MLB and removed him from the ballot. Bart Giamatti, in his speech announcing the decision, was very clear:

"The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is a 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. There is absolutely no deal for reinstatement."

Of course Donald Trump would ignore that. He has gotten away with way worse crimes than Rose committed. Gambling? He has yet to face any repercussions for his decades of tax fraud and, oh yeah, an insurrection. In the grand scheme of things, Rose’s crimes are far less consequential. But he broke the rule and deserved his punishment. He never showed any remorse for it, either. He denied it, and then whenever he had a book to publish or a TV job offer he’d admit to a little bit more of his crimes to try to get some sympathy.

“I think that’s why I get this crawl, when I hear that I did all this because of betting on baseball. It just really irks me that all the money, and all the time and all the effort and everything I’ve lost was to try and prove I didn’t bet on baseball. And finally I get an agreement says I didn’t and yet everybody still believes I did.”

Pete Rose in 1991

In the end, he made out better on the permanently ineligible list than if he’d ever gotten in the Hall. All those card shows in Vegas, Atlantic City and his annual crashing of Cooperstown during Induction Weekend lined his pockets with thousands of dollars (some that the IRS knew about, some they didn’t) that he wouldn’t have otherwise gotten if he’d been Pete Rose, Class of 1992.

We can’t selectively enforce laws. I know it seems like we do. And we currently have half of the country okay with a grifter and conman running their country, either by ignoring his offenses completely or making flimsy excuses for his rap sheet and then wearing his mugshot on a T-shirt. But while Donald Trump has somehow escaped accountability for 78 years, that doesn’t mean we should give up on trying to be better people and enforcing our rules for the good of our fellow man. Someone who gets away with a crime one time gets emboldened, no matter what the offense was. Jack Bauer says it best:

For those that say, who cares if he only bet on them to win (like Trump says in that word vomit he posted earlier)? Did he bet on them to win every day, like he says here?

"I bet on my team every night. I didn't bet on my team four nights a week. I was wrong," Rose said. "I bet on my team to win every night because I love my team, I believe in my team. I did everything in my power every night to win that game."

Pete Rose, 2007

Well, then he’s an idiot. What if he only bet on them when he thought they would win? Would he manage the team differently? Would he be aggressive with a two-run lead in a game in mid-July for a last place team just to cover the spread, possibly risking a tired reliever’s arm health in pursuit of that payout? As the scourge of online gambling of the past 5 years has shown, the way people act when they need to win a bet versus the way they act when they’re going through the marathon that is an MLB season is completely different. If Pete Rose needed action on the team he was managing to get any sort of excitement out of his job, then he should’ve just quit and moved in with his bookie. He walked past the “No Gambling” sign every day for 30 years and still did it. Keep him banned.

He was also a bad guy

Having Donald Trump in your corner is a giant red flag of someone’s character. But in case that isn’t enough, or the gambling violations weren’t enough, then there was the sexual relationship with a 14-year-old in the 70’s. He says she was 16 when it happened, which was and still is the age of consent in Ohio, but still disgusting. And when he was confronted about it in the 2010’s, he didn’t deny it or give a “no comment”. It was more of a “so what” attitude:

"It was 55 years ago, babe," Rose told a female baseball writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Sounds a lot like someone saying he couldn’t have committed the sexual assault he was accused of because she wasn’t pretty enough.

He also finally showed some(?) remorse, saying it would’ve been better to be a domestic abuser:

I made mistakes. I can’t whine about it. I’m the one that messed up and I’m paying the consequences. However, if I am given a second chance, I won’t need a third chance. And to be honest with you, I picked the wrong vice. I should have picked alcohol. I should have picked drugs or I should have picked up beating up my wife or girlfriend because if you do those three, you get a second chance. They haven’t given too many gamblers a second chances in the world of baseball.

Pete Rose, 2013

I know it sucks when your childhood hero turns out to be a bag of shit, but it’s time to move on. He was a predator, a tax cheat, a grifter and degenerate gambler who was caught and banished. It’s not worth anyone’s time to do this dance again.

Except… now Rob Manfred is considering the reinstatement request from Rose’s family:

Sources: Manfred mulling family's request to remove Rose from ineligible list

What a coincidence. If Manfred were smart, and cared about baseball (debatable), he’d ignore both the Roses’ and Trump’s request. In less than 48 hours, this story will be buried as this dumpster fire of an administration works to dig another new low for the USA. By entertaining this idea he brings the political cloud over the sport that hurt the NFL a few years ago when Trump used the anthem protests to score his cheap political points with his hateful base. He’s clearly just bored and trolling. He’s a sad, lonely old man who has no more rallies to headline, no more legal battles to fight and… well he’s not even really in charge right now. There is no facet of American life he won’t try to stick his ever-sniffling nose into and stir shit up just to get people talking about him.

If Manfred takes the bait and lets this get national coverage, next thing you know we’ve got more division on our hands. You’ll have fans arguing about Rose’s status and Trump’s words. You’ll inevitably get some kind of racial uproar when Trump pisses off one of the Latin American countries. And then you’ll have a ratings dip on your hands when you’re trying to negotiate the next round of TV deals because some of his right-wing diehards will boycott baseball until Rose is inducted and Manfred says “Thank you, Dear Leader” from the Oval Office.

What should we do? Ignore this (or impeach him for crimes against the National Pastime). Deny the reinstatement and let’s bury this in a time capsule for 75 years. Let that generation dig it up and decide what to do with Rose’s candidacy then. This generation of baseball fans has suffered enough from the Pete Rose drama, let’s ignore this latest episode and get on with the 2025 season.

So long