This might not be the most popular opinion in the world, but here it goes: I think Pete Rose should be allowed into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. I know what the faults are against him, and I know he hasn’t exactly carried himself with much character of late, but I can’t honestly say I care about any of that. Yes, his off-the-field behavior was highly unacceptable, and he broke one of baseball’s most coveted rules when he decided to bet on his team he was managing when he was with the Cincinnati Reds. Again, Rose was no angel, but thankfully that’s not what I’m arguing here. I just would like to see one of the greatest baseball players of all time get his due.
For those of you that do not know about Rose as a ball player, I’ll sum up his playing career briefly for you. He played 23 years from 1963 until 1986, winning three World Series titles and an MVP award as well. He currently stands as the all-time leader in hits and games played, while also being named to the MLB All-Century Team. Needless to say, Rose was an extremely good baseball player.
This might be one of the most heavily debated topics in all of sports, and realistically, it might take even more years for there to be any real substance involving this situation to change from its current state. The reason it has been on my mind of late is some have speculated that MLB commissioner Bud Selig might extend Rose a pardon or even reinstate him into MLB as he prepares to retire as commissioner come January 2015. I find this highly unlikely, but there have been reports stating Selig is seriously considering doing so. The whole debate surrounding Rose is fascinating because it really allows us to see how out-of-sorts the entire process of voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame has become.
The argument for having Rose in the hall of fame encompasses a lot of moving parts in total. First off, let’s just examine for a second some of the individuals who are enshrined on the walls in Cooperstown. Take for instance Ty Cobb, who is considered one of the greatest players of all time. He is widely known to have been a serious racist and a violent person, to the point of which he would beat up fans that called him out after games. Also, one of the most widely recognizable names in baseball lore, Babe Ruth, wasn’t exactly the standard of moral purity either. He is remembered as a womanizer who had numerous affairs, and it was even rumored he fathered a child with a waitress at a coffee shop. Along with this, he’s probably one of history’s most famous drunks, as he was rarely ever seen without a drink in hand. There have been others elected who have cheated their way to success by using questionable tactics such as pitchers using substances to have better command of the baseball.
taking a look at these past players displays the fact not everyone that has been inducted in Cooperstown has a squeaky-clean reputation. The only difference between the exploits of those involving the players mentioned earlier and Rose is that what Rose did actually broke a major MLB rule. All of the actions of those aforementioned players and Rose were not ideal, but only Rose is left out of the Hall of Fame due to what MLB determined to be irresponsible and damaging behavior.
Adding to this everlasting debate, many players of the so called “Steroid Era” will never get inducted into the hall of fame either, but in the end, did they actually break any written rules of baseball? At the time, many of the players were using steroids there was no written rule stating they couldn’t partake in such behavior. The group of writers that hold the privilege to be able to vote for who gets elected into the hall of fame comes off as hypocritical in the sense they won’t let people they suspect took steroids into the hall of fame; not because they broke any rules, but because they saw the suspected acts as immoral. However, is taking steroids really any worse than the things Cobb and Ruth were doing off the field back in their day or Rose betting on baseball? In the end, it really all comes down to whether or not you choose to view these acts as equally wrong or if some are worse than others.
The baseball writers who vote on the hall of fame need to get together a set of standards and define what the Baseball Hall of Fame should actually stand for. Whether it should be on-the-field excellence or should be expanded to include everything a player does during the course of his life, then that needs to be decided upon sooner than later. In the mean time, one of the game’s greatest players will unfortunately just have to continue to wait for his moment in the sun.
