Pete Rose 1987 Topps

On May 23, 2016, the above card showed up in my mailbox. This is what I wrote it on Facebook:

“Look who just showed up in my mailbox, it's the MLB leader in hits and lies: Peter Edward Rose. 

If the Baseball Card Bandit knows anything about Byron Michael Magrane it's that Byron likes to talk in the third person (like Rickey Henderson) and HATES Pete Rose. 

You made a powerful enemy today, BCB.”

It may not seem like it, but I’ve mellowed on a lot of things that used to drive me nuts when I was younger. Whether it’s because I got older and realized that there are more important things to worry about or whether the 24-hour sports newscycle is so damn relentless and everything is now a BIG DEAL!!!! aside from what athletes do on during the game, I genuinely don’t care. Aside from violent crimes, that’s criminal behavior. But:

• Steroids? I’m not convinced how much it actually makes one a better athlete.
• Drugs? The athlete is sick and needs help. It’s nothing personal.
• Acrimony between teammates? This idea that every team is a family and all of the players are brothers is dumb.
• Cheating? These sports make billions upon billions of dollars, if you don’t think your team is fudging the rules then you’re simply naïve.

Inconsequential things like a team in a uniform color I didn’t like or a columnist writing something disparaging about my team or if my team lost a game in the season, it all used to drive me absolutely crazy. I thought it was because I was “passionate” but looking back, it wasn’t passion. It just wasn’t good, it was just too much. I came to the conclusion that if I was going to follow sports, I had to chill out much more.

Things don’t bother me as much as they used to. But there is one thing that gets my fires roaring and that’s the discussion of Pete Rose.

Rose is one of the all-time baseball greats. He has the most hit, he worked crazy hard every day, he had a terrible haircut, but guess what? He didn’t care. He was Pete Rose and you weren’t. Just look at this nationally run advertisement. You have to be confident in your abilities to comb your hair like that AND be photographed in jockeys.

Yes. Pete Rose was so confident that he didn’t think that the rules of baseball applied to him. I’ve been a major league baseball locker room once. And while I was there, I saw a huge sign essentially saying, “Don’t bet on baseball.” Rose played in the major leagues from 1963-1986 and managed three seasons after he finished playing. Rose saw that sign every day he was at work for 27 seasons. Rose was also a student of the game and its history. He knows the strict rules baseball has when it comes to gambling.

You don’t do it. Ever.

There are a million reasons, but the biggest reason is: you don’t want the fans to think that the game is crooked. Otherwise, they won’t be interested. If they aren’t interested, attendance drops, TV contracts go unrenewed, a once major sport turns into a niche pastime and people lose billions of dollars annually.

Even though he was a virulent racist and an all-around fucking asshole, the first commissioner of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis understood that the public trust is the utmost important thing. Without that, professional sports are dead. That’s a main reason why he was such a hard ass against the conspirators of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, who threw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.

You can argue that Sox owner Charles Comiskey was a complete dick (he was!) especially when it came to paying a fair wage to his star players, but in the end, that’s no excuse. The eight members of the White Sox were suspended from Major League Baseball for life and lost a lot more than money, they lost their good names.

Pete Rose didn’t think that the rules of baseball were meant for him. He was Pete Rose, Charlie Hustle, the most important cog of the Big Red Machine, idol of millions. It was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Rose made bets with bookies. The fact that he wasn’t very good at betting, also was a big deal too because these guys had Rose in their pocket. He had to do what they told him.

But Rose lied and denied. I never made any bets whatsoever. This is just a smear job. Then he admitted that he lied a little, he made bets on NFL games and maybe some college football and hoops games, but just that. He never, ever made any bets on professional baseball games—especially when he was the manager of the Cincinnati Reds!

A few years passed and Rose admitted to wagering on professional baseball games, but he stuck to his guns about never betting on the Reds. He’d never do that! Until a few years later in 2004, when he had a book to sell and he finally came clean and admitted that yes, he bet on the Reds. He did it as a player and he when he was a manager.

After years of pissing on the grave of A. Bartlett Giamatti (the commissioner who first suspended Peter Rose who then died literally a week after the ruling) and new commissioner Fay Vincent, Rose essentially admitted that these two guys were right, he was a lying, gambling creep.

It was once written about Watergate that, “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up.” And that’s how I feel about Pete Rose. He played us all for suckers. He continued to lie and lie and lie, until he realized that he could make a few bucks on the truth. Then he told the truth, which I’m not so sure is even the real truth, just Pete’s truth. He was so adamant about it too. And arrogant. And tireless. The traits that made him a suburb baseball player, screwed him when it came to humbling himself and taking his just punishment.

He bet (pun intended) on his fame and his goodwill and his charisma to get him out of trouble. And when all that failed miserably, he became a shill. He’d go on any show and spill his “truth”. He’d go on any cable channel and sell his crap. He go up to Cooperstown, NY during Induction Weekend, take the spotlight away from worthy Hall of Famers and sell his autograph and get glad handed by fan boy sycophants.

Pete Rose tried change himself from athlete to a cause. But how can you support a cause that is built of hubris, arrogance and lies? Some do. To them, Pete Rose will always be the guy in the goofy bowl cut, running to first after a walk, belly flopping into second on a steal and bowling over the catcher stupid enough to block home plate.

And you know what, I get that. I really do. Nostalgia is a tough drug to kick. Once it gets its claws into you, all of your memories are sepia-toned and stored in amber. You’re younger, your heroes are infallible, the world is how it should be. But it’s not, athletes aren’t heroes because they can throw a ball far or hit a sphere out of park. They’re flawed human beings, like us. It’s okay that they made mistakes, we all do. But for the big ones, they need to pay.

Shoeless Joe Jackson knew what he was doing and he was barred from baseball forever. Pete Rose knew what he was doing even more than Jackson (who was an illiterate farm boy) and needs to face the same penalty. If not, what’s to stop the next Pete Rose from betting on baseball? Lifetime ban? More like 30 years and I’ll be back in baseball’s good graces.

Pete Rose shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near Major League Baseball. No matter how much I mellow, I will always believe this to be true.