LO, HOW A ROSE IS GROWING

Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, since it’s been criminally under-reported, but Pete Rose has a book and an interview both coming out on Thursday, and in both he finally admits what everybody and Fay Vincent’s dog already knew: He bet on baseball while managing the Cincinnati Reds.

(In other news, sun disappears behind western horizon; experts believe it will reappear in the east in approximately 12 to 16 hours.)

Rose’s confession has been good for the soul of sports pundits, with many saying that, despite Rose’s admission, he should still be barred from baseball. Association with gambling taints the the game, they say; the commissioner must keep the purity of the game intact. Besides, as several cynical wags have noted, Rose’s confession comes in the form of a hardback book, one from which (it may be assumed) Rose stands to profit handsomely. Sure, he’s not gonna get Harry Potter money, but he ought to turn a quick million or two, and that’s before it comes out in paperback.

(I’m actually looking forward to Rose’s book. It’s been a few years since a really pretentious, boring book about the game has been published, so it’s about time for a new one. And hey, Moneyball isn’t coming out in paperback for a few more months . . . there’s a narrow window of opportunity for Pete Rose to become the Big Baseball Bore of the preseason; he might as well hit it.)

Anybody who’s going to criticize Pete Rose for milking his big-league career for every possible dollar ought to take a good, hard look at the conduct of Pete Rose’s many lessers. If he chooses to sell his story rather than giving it away, that hardly makes him unique in the baseball world. Most former greats support themselves by selling the same two words over and over, after all. What’s the harm in adding 149,998 more?

“Fine,” say the sniffy ones, “baseball players are known to be a greedy lot. But you still haven’t dealt with how Pete Rose hurt the image of the game. What about the little kids being taken to these grand ball parks by their fathers? What about ‘Say it ain’t so, Joe’? How can you justify including a man of as little character as Pete Rose in the hallowed halls of Cooperstown?”

First of all, even Rose’s detractors know that many Hall of Fame plaques could double as mugshots. Nobody’s put it any better than Dylan Wilbanks:

I’ve been to Cooperstown and seen the plaques of some real slimeballs — Cap Anson, a guy who makes David Duke look like Martin Luther King; Ty Cobb, baseball’s greatest anti-role model; various womanizers, spitball throwers, cheaters, and folks you wouldn’t want to live next door to. They aren’t exactly Nobel Prize winners… but none of them bet on baseball. To put Rose’s face in the same room as these guys cheapens the value of the Hall — even for Cap Anson, whose plaque is worth less than the metal it was cast out of.

Well put. Now, you tell me what’s worst for the image of baseball: Pete Rose’s gambling, Ty Cobb’s perpetual misanthropy, or Cap Anson’s racial hatred? Shoot, even the all-American Paul Molitor, elected to the Hall of Fame today, has skeletons in his closet. Last I knew, moral grace wasn’t exactly a requirement to be good at baseball.

Baseball has chosen to honor the less-than-perfect in the past. To single out Rose because he happened to be involved in something that tainted the image of baseball is hypocritical. First of all, it assumes that baseball had an image to begin with. After the ‘94 season-ditching strike/lockout, Alex Rodriguez getting the world’s dumbest contract, the revelation that at least 5% of all baseball players are on steroids, and the mess that resulted when A-Rod tried to get out of the world’s dumbest contract, I don’t think baseball has much of an image left. Let’s see:

Everybody who would subject your twelve-year-old daughter to moral instruction from the starting lineup of the Cleveland Indians, say ‘aye.’

[sound of crickets chirping]

OK, what about the owners? If you’d let any of them manage your checkbook, say ‘aye.’

[kookaburra chuckles in the distance]

Alrighty then! We’ve established that what little image baseball has is not necessarily positive. Now, what about Pete Rose’s contribution to that less-than-wonderful image?

We can certainly start with this statement: If one were to disregard everything Pete Rose did as a manager–both the good and bad things–he’d be a lock for the Hall of Fame. There is simply no way you can argue otherwise. He is the all-time hits leader; just for that alone he belongs in Cooperstown. His dedication and drive (”Charlie Hustle”) are equally legendary; nobody has ever played the game harder than Pete Rose, and it’s likely that nobody ever will.

So it all boils down to how much damage you think he did by gambling on baseball. I’ll grant that he did some. But pick up your morning paper tomorrow and look in the sports section. You’ll see the “America’s Line” bit in among the box scores. We certainly see it here in Wisconsin, and sports books are most illegal here. But fear not; there’s any number of offshore sports books willing to take your bets. They’re just a phone call or search engine away. There’s about a gazillion of them. And they aren’t all supported solely by one Peter Edward Rose.

Every day, even though it’s highly illegal, people’s friends and neighbors bet on sports. The taxi driver and the marketing exec. The teacher and the steelworker. Polliticians and police officers.

Little League coaches.

People’s fathers. Fathers who take their kids to big-league baseball games and never let on that they’ve got a hundred on the visiting team.

If Pete Rose had no business betting on baseball, well, neither did any of these folks. You can cry and moan about “the integrity of the game” all you want to; as far as I’m concerned, that’s like lamenting Madonna’s loss of virginity.

Pete Rose is only the scapegoat for what too many sports fans don’t like about themselves: they love the game, but they love it more when they’ve got a little side action going on.

Put him in Cooperstown, you nitwits.