REINSTATE PETE ROSE
LIFT THE BAN! AT LIFTTHEBAN.NET
originally posted to DAVE PINTO'S "Baseball Musings" in 2004 at http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/005910.php
My only emendations would be that Pete Rose NEVER took steroids, NEVER threw the World Series, NEVER doctored a baseball, and was by far the dominant player of his era.
PETE ROSE WAS THE GREATEST HITTER OF NOT JUST HIS ERA BUT ANY ERA. IF YOU RECALCULATE HIS STATISTICS TO 2000 AND PUT HIM IN FENWAY PARK, HE WOULD HAVE HAD 200 HITS 18 CONSECUTIVE YEARS, WOULD HAVE HAD 5,000 CAREER HITS, WOULD HAVE HIT .394 IN 1968, .386 IN 1969 AND .386 IN 1973, 62 DOUBLES IN 1978, 174 RUNS SCORED IN 1976, 283 HITS IN 1973, CAREER LINE OF .341/.417/.460/.877 WITH 902 CAREER DOUBLES 5165 HITS 2912 RUNS 2900 RUNS CREATED IT IS A JOKE TO SAY DEREK JETER IS ANYTHING CLOSE TO PETE ROSE; PETE ROSE PLAYED IN A PITCHER'S ERA BUT PUT UP HITTER'S NUMBERS
Regarding Pete Rose and gambling. It is critical to put Pete Rose's gambling into perspective. Harold Seymour's three part series on the history of baseball which culminates in "The Golden Age,", and from which Bill James liberally borrows (with annotation) for many of his sidebars in the Historical Baseball Abstract and his Guide to Baseball Managers, makes it perfectly clear that a large number of famous, Hall of Fame baseball players gambled routinely and gambled on their own teams. Those players included Hal Chase, Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, and may have included countless others who were bitter after salaries were reduced (1) after the American and National Leagues achieved peace in the early 1900s and (2) after the Federal League was disbanded and peace was achieved. As Eliot Asinof points out in Eight Men Out, even the eight men of the White Sox had ample reason for taking bets, because they were miserably underpaid by Charlie Comiskey, who according to Seymour, cleared in excess of $500,000 in profits from the Chisox during the 1910s during an era of no income tax or 1-3% income tax. He never shared that revenue and only spent about $25-40,000 of that on his players.
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Next, let's talk about more recent players. Anyone read Ball Four by Jim Bouton? Mickey Mantle spent his whole career whoring and drinking and womanizing. Hall of Fame. Did anyone forget about beaver-shooting from that book??? The entire Yankee clubhouse from the early 60s, of which many are in the Hall of Fame, engaged in that despicable practice.Baseball players all played poker. All years of this century, they gambled on cards, they drank and they womanized. We know that cocaine was common in the Pittsburgh Pirate and KC Royals locker rooms even while they won World Series titles, and many of those players testified at drug trials in the 1980s. A lot of those players ended up in the hall of fame.
Babe Ruth. Traded from the Red Sox. Why? Because he had prostitutes everywhere on Kenmore Street, drank every night, gambled and ate too much. In short, he was dirty and stayed out all night in a small town Boston atmosphere. The same team allegedly dumped Tris Speaker for salary, but really wasn't it because he gamled on games in 1916???
Babe Ruth didn't win a series with the Yanks until 1923. He lost in 1921 and 22. He lost in 1926 to an alcoholic famous for being so drunk he never showed up to games. That man was Grover Clevelan "Pete" Alexander. That guy only won 373 games and made it to the Hall of Fame. Oh, and Ronald Reagan played him in a movie where he struck out Lazzeri with the bases loaded to win the 26 series.
So Rose is a gambling addict. Ruth was a sex and food addict. Alexander was an alcoholic. Cobb was a vicious racist who also gambled and purposely spiked people while playing. Eddie Collins & Joe Cronin were visious racists while running the Red Sox and preventing the integration of the Red Sox for more than 30 years, according to new research. The same racist Joe Cronin who was President of the the American League. Hal Chase's gambling kept the Yankees and other teams in the 2d division for all of the 1900s and 1910s and no one did anything about it. Doc Gooden and Daryl Strawberry were fed cocaine by Keith Hernandez in 1986, but no one every sent Hernandez to jail, much less banned him from baseball, even though he ruined two lives and two Hall of Fame careers.
Ty Cobb was a bastard jerk, but his accomplishments put him in the hall of fame. Pete Rose is a lot nicer guy than Ty Cobb; was never a racist; was a team player; and achieved his records in eras, the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s which were comparatively dominated by pitching, especially the first seven years of his career.
It is unfair to bar him from the Hall of Fame for having fallen into a moral abyss of late. A five or ten year suspension is more than enought punishment. He didn't throw the World Series, as Bill James correctly points out, which is what Joe Jackson allegedly did. He did what at least 200 other players did in baseball, including Ty Cobb, which is bet on baseball. Ty Cobb was called into a Commissioner's meeting in 1926, and he was not barred from baseball for throwing a game, even though there's plenty of evidence he threw that game and plenty more, along with Tris Speaker.
fair is fair. Reinstate the man. The Philly fans still love him and we want him back here to throw out as many baseballs as we can give him. He was an integral part of three World Series teams and six pennant or division winners. Unlike Cobb, he was a team player, a winner and a champion, and he loved his teammates no matter what their color. He never threw a game to give a batting champtionship or pennant to someone else, which Cobb allegedly did. He never threw a World Series, which Joe Jackson allegedly did.
His crimes pale in comparison. Justice as Aristotle says must be in accordance with the crime. The punishment in this case is far too great for the crime; Free Pete Rose!!!
--Arthur J Kyriazis
Biotech Consultant; biostatistician
Posted by: Art Kyriazis at April 29, 2004 04:03 PM
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From "Lift the Ban" a website devoted to Lifting the Ban against Pete Rose:http://www.lifttheban.net/pete-roses-records/
Major League records:
Most career hits – 4,256
Most career outs – 10,328
Most career games played – 3,562
Most career at bats – 14,053
Most career singles – 3,215
Most career runs by a switch hitter – 2,165
Most career doubles by a switch hitter – 746
Most career walks by a switch hitter – 1,566
Most career total bases by a switch hitter – 5,752
Most seasons of 200 or more hits – 10
Most consecutive seasons of 100 or more hits – 23
Most consecutive seasons with 600 or more at bats – 13 (1968–1980)
Most seasons with 600 at bats – 17
Most seasons with 150 or more games played – 17
Most seasons with 100 or more games played – 23
Record for playing in the most winning games – 1,972
Only player in major league history to play more than 500 games at five different positions – 1B (939), LF (671), 3B (634), 2B (628), RF (595)
National League records:
Most years played – 24
Most consecutive years played – 24
Most career runs – 2,165
Most career doubles – 746
Most career games with 5 or more hits – 10
Modern (post-1900) record for longest consecutive game hitting streak – 44
Modern record for most consecutive hitting streaks of 20 or more games – 7
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Bill James defended Rose from the accusations in the Dowd Report. There was a piece published on the Baseball Prospectus website refuting James' account at http://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/20021031zumsteg.shtml on October 31, 2002. Although in the end Rose confesses to betting on baseball in his memoir, Rose does not anywhere confess to all of the charges made in the Dowd Report. Even accepting all of the charges in the Dowd Report as true, a reasonable person would still have to argue for Rose's reinstatement, because his crimes are not nearly as great as those of others.
Just to take one more example, there is excellent evidence that DENNY MCLAIN was injured to to his involvement with gambling and mobsters towards the end of the 1967 season, and that his injured toe directly influenced the outcome of the 1967 pennant race--leading to the Tigers losing and the Red Sox winning. According to the SABR bio of McClain, Bowie Kuhn and practically the whole world knew about McClain, but rather than being suspended from baseball, McLain was only suspended for half a season:
DENNY MCLAIN - HIS GAMBLING INFLUENCED THE OUTCOME OF THE 1967 PENNANT RACE BUT BASEBALL ONLY SUSPENDED HIM FOR ONE HALF OF ONE SEASON DESPITE CONCRETE EVIDENCE THAT GAMBLING AND RACKETEERING AND MCLAIN'S INVOLVEMENT IN THEM AFFECTED THE RACE - HE WAS LATER CONVICTED TWICE OF RACKETEERING RELATED FELONIES BUT WAS NEVER BANNED FROM BASEBALL - PETE ROSE WAS TREATED MUCH MORE SEVERELY
In February 1970, Sports Illustrated featured McLain on its cover next to the headline “Denny McLain and the Mob, Baseball’s Big Scandal.” The mob? According to the magazine, in early 1967 McLain invested in a bookmaking operation based in a restaurant in Flint, Michigan; several of his partners were part of the Syrian mob. When a gambler named Edward Voshen won $46,000 on a horse race, his bookie couldn’t pay it off, suggesting instead that Voshen find the bookie’s partners. One of his partners was McLain. Voshen spent several months trying to get his money, finally enlisting the aid of mobster Tony Giacalone. According to the magazine’s sources, Giacalone met with McLain in early September and, while threatening much worse, brought his heel down on McLain’s toes and dislocated them. This would have coincided with time of McLain’s ankle-toes injury in September 1967. The magazine also reported that Giacalone had bet heavily on the Red Sox and Twins to win the pennant, and had made a large bet on the Angels in McLain’s final start.
McLain denied most of the story. He admitted to investing in the bookmaking business to the tune of $15,000, but claimed that his partners reneged on him, causing McLain to withdraw his support. He told Bowie Kuhn, baseball’s commissioner, that he was completely uninvolved in the ring at the time of the Voshen bet, but oddly admitted that he had loaned $10,000 to one of the partners to help pay off the debt. Furthermore, he had never met Giacalone, and McLain retold the story of his toe injury. (In subsequent years, McLain recalled that it was an ankle sprain, not injured toes.) Just prior to spring training, Kuhn suspended McLain indefinitely while he conducted an investigation.
The problem with all of these accusations was that many of the people making them were criminals and lowlifes, as Sports Illustrated acknowledged. Although he has continued to deny the allegations regarding his injury, his denials have been in themselves damning. In his 2007 memoir I Told You I Wasn’t Perfect, he writes that he was heavily distracted in September 1967. “I was spooked about Ed Voshen and worried about being exposed,” he writes. “I kept expecting someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, where’s my money?’ or that my car was going to blow up.” This fear is precisely why baseball has a paranoia about gambling.
If these problems were not enough, McLain was also suddenly broke. Though his annual income was close to $200,000, McLain had entrusted it all with a lawyer, who either mishandled it or stole it before fleeing to Japan. Without his baseball income, McLain’s financial problems caused him to file for bankruptcy. Claiming that all of his problems were due to “poor business decisions,” his petition listed debts of $446,069 and assets of only $413.
On April 1, 1970, Kuhn announced his decision. He continued McLain’s suspension until July 1, roughly half of the season. Kuhn’s report, among other things, said: “While McLain believed he had become a partner in this operation and has so admitted to me…it would appear that he was the victim of a confidence scheme. I would thus conclude that McLain was never a partner and had no proprietary interest in the bookmaking operation.” Kuhn also absolved McLain from any charges that his actions had any effect on baseball games or the 1967 pennant race. (On the contrary, McLain’s later recollection that he feared for his life in September 1967 suggests that the pennant race was quite affected.)
After Kuhn read his statement, a reporter asked him to explain the difference between McLain attempting to become a bookmaker, and actually becoming one. “I think you have to consider the difference is the same as between murder and attempted murder,” responded the wise commissioner. Reporters all over the country, and especially in Detroit, thought the decision was a whitewash. Denny’s teammates seemed surprised as well. Dick McAuliffe spoke for many when he said: “If Denny’s innocent, it should be nothing. If he’s guilty, then this is not enough.” Jim Price, the Tigers’ player representative, said that most Tigers thought McLain would get one or two years, or else nothing at all. Nonetheless, three months it was.
