Is it definitively proven he ONLY bet on baseball as a manager and for his team to win??
If so, that may change my mind.
I thought he bet as a player for years.
Pete Rose RIP
- Thread starter McLovin32
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Is it definitively proven he ONLY bet on baseball as a manager and for his team to win??
If so, that may change my mind.
I thought he bet as a player for years.
Trump says, I hope so! Cuz I'm a cheater in the life and a cheater of the wife.
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Ha! Here's my Pete Rose story. (true story)
In Vegas with the boys for March Madness weekend. Needing a break from the casinos and booze we decide to stroll around and come across a sports collectibles store. Rose was signing autographs (apparently he was a regular there). We decide what the hell, let's go in. I buy a ball and get in line to meet Charlie Hustle.
There's a small TV on his table. Just as I step up Pete says "Hang on a sec" and focuses on the game. It's like a 10 point spread with just a few seconds to go, player at the free throw line. The guy misses the free throw, Pete says "DAMMIT!" and hits his fist on the table. We all knew what we had just witnessed. Priceless.
No player ever given a permanent ban from the game has ever been enshrined in the Hall. Pete isn’t going to change that unless there’s a fundamental change and others are swept in, too. Baseball has one unwritten rule that’s been made very clear in every clubhouse going back more than 100 years.
He knew.
He acted.
He lied.
He lied more.
It took him decades to come clean about the betting, but he did so only when he thought there was a path that benefitted him.
I’m out. All-time hit king and one of the most famous and infamous players in the history of baseball. Seriously flawed human, but that’s not why he shouldn’t be in. He shouldn’t (and won’t) be in because he knowingly broke the 1 unbreakable rule and thought he was too popular and too famous and too “about winning” to get away with it.
#1 in that era sports betting wasn’t legal
#2 to think that’s ok, you must think bookies weren’t tracking Rose’s activity and likely faded the Reds on days he didn’t bet on them?
Ah interesting. Do you know how many games Rose bet on?
How do you feel about steroid fiends like Bonds and McGwire being let into the Hall?
Shoeless Joe Jackson still hasn't gotten in and he's been dead nearly 75 years. He was by far and away the best player of either team in the 1919 World Series, even though he willingly accepted a bribe to ensure the White Sox lost.
I'd put Jackson in the Hall before Rose because the former was ashamed of what he did, and even tried to return the illicitly-earned money. Rose had no qualms with his sins.
I’ve read a lot about the Rose case over the years and all accounts are that MLB and the feds had all kinds of info about his bets (hence the tax fraud convictions).
I think betting and cheating are very, very different things. Baseball has a long history of guys looking for an edge on the field - spitballs, trying to disguise a balk pickoff move, greenies in every clubhouse in the 60s & 70s, PEDs, corked bats, pitchers using Emory boards, thumbtacks, “sticky stuff” and using tech to steal signs plus stuff I’m probably not even thinking about. I’m not going to defend it, but baseball has never been consistent about those things. There are PED users already in the HOF because they were popular, but others that weren’t as liked are still on the outside looking in. So….personally, I’d probably put them in given the overall level of indifference given to cheating over the years. Either way, I’d prefer consistency, not we loved David Ortiz so he’s in, but Barry Bonds was a dick and he’s out.
The betting rules were set after the 1919 White Sox threw the World Series after being paid off by bookies. In the 1800s and early 1900s, the sport was rife with gambling scandals and there were definitely a lot of the public that was starting to have doubts about the overall competitive integrity of the game. Commissioner Landis (a man with an entire world of his own issues in and out of baseball) laid down the law - bet on the game and you’re done forever. He banned all the “Black Sox”, he banned others. Over the years, some others had been caught and banned in the years after. The rule was known, publicized, posted on every clubhouse in baseball for decades. Pete knew the rule and he knew the punishment and he still took the action.
Pete might have actually been able to soften MLB’s stance in the early 1990s if he had come clean, talked about his issues and had been contrite. Instead he liked for years and years and years.
