Pete Rose, Gambling, and the Baseball HOF

[Buttoneer]

I've changed my mind. I believe Pete Rose should be inducted into the Baseball HOF. He's going to be cleaner than any other future HOF prospects as the advent of online sports gambling is going to corrupt all sports.

[Cartoonist]

1. Posthumously

He agreed to the lifetime ban.

[brewens]

2. Not unless Joe Jackson gets in too. He was way cleaner than Pete in my book. n/t

[malthaussen]

3. I dunno. Everyone accepts Joe's "gee, I didn't know what was going on" bs.

They'll say, "Oh, look how he hit in the WS," but he racked up hits when they didn't matter, and even supposedly hit a homerun "by accident."

There is so much crap surrounding the Black Sox that I feel like they all should be consigned to the dustbin of history. So Joe Jackson could hit a little, big deal. There's twenty more who hit as well or better.

-- Mal

[malthaussen]

4. Normally, I don't indulge in this argument...

... it comes up every year around this time.

Some thoughts: quite a few people in baseball cheated, used performance enhancing drugs, or greenies (if we believe Jim Bouton), and/or were just despicable human beings but are in the Hall of Fame anyway. Since there are not now, nor ever have been, any standards in either statistical production or conduct to qualify one for the Hall, some get excluded and vilified for some reason, and some don't. And some don't make it because they were active in politics or the labor movement before Free Agency. The Baseball HoF is not, strictly speaking, as much of a joke as the Rock n Roll HoF, but I wouldn't want to live on the difference.

That said, if someone has acted in such a way that even the HoF can't see fit to admit him, he probably doesn't belong, no matter how great a player he might have been. Someone who consciously and repeatedly violated the very clear and explicit rules of gambling in the league that were current at his time does not, IMO, deserve consideration for entry, even if he were a greater player than Babe Ruth (who was a cheater), or God himself.

As for changing standards, I disagree. One can not say, retroactively, that if the rules change, those who violated the previous rules are now not guilty of misconduct. That is, logically, the same thing as saying that if the rules change, those who violated the new rules in the past are now not eligible. Pete Rose, Joe Jackson, and several others violated the rules of their time, and were caught at it. There are plenty of hearsay reasons to believe that other players violated the rules (eg, offering or accepting bribes to not "bear down" in a game) and were either exonerated or not discovered until much later. But it doesn't seem reasonable to say that "because everybody else did it and wasn't caught, I should get away with it too even though I was caught." The rules must apply when they are known to have been violated, or why have rules at all? (Which is, by the way, exactly where I come down on the question of Merkle's Boner)

Look, society has laws. Many people violate them and are not caught, or are exonerated for some specious reason. Does that mean that the laws do not/should not matter? There are plenty of people who would argue just that, but I don't think most of us would like to live around them.

-- Mal

[ProfessorGAC]

5. Excellent Post, Mal

We also know he was a routine user of amphetamines & a serial abuser.
And, statistically, I can't get past the fact that there are 130 something players with higher batting average & 220 something with better on-base percentages.
The guy whose record he broke had a lifetime average 64 points higher.
So, the search number of hits, taken in a larger context, is a weaker argument for induction.

[malthaussen]

6. Taken strictly on the basis of his record, he was a pretty dominant player in his era.

Led the league in BA three times and OBP twice. Was universally thought in his time to be among the best players in the league. So on that basis, he's good enough to get in, but certainly not among the best all-time. Probably what Bill James would have called a Category B Hall-of-famer. If he hadn't earned himself a lifetime ban (now expired, presumably), I don't think there's much doubt he would have been elected on the first ballot, but probably not unanimously because he rubbed some people the wrong way.

-- Mal

[ProfessorGAC]

7. I Get Your Point

I don't agree. Even in the 60s, singles hitters weren't "dominant". That's even more true when they lowered the mound.
Aside from piling up lots of hits, u think he was ok. An all-star, but not even the James' B hall of fame.

Context matters on his team. Pitchers were not going to pitch him cautiously, potentially walking him when Morgan, Foster, Bench, Perez & Griffey hitting behind him.
It would have only taken one less hit per month over his career for him to never have caught Cobb.
I thought he was overrated then & I still do.