Misplaced crusading

Another year at Cooperstown has passed and for at least another year, Pete Rose will have to wait for his rightful place in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader, a 17-time All-Star, 1963 NL Rookie of the Year and 1973 Most Valuable Player is on the outside looking in at the Hall.

The only way a player with such credentials could be kept of the hall is the fact that he was banned from baseball in 1989 following a gambling scandal. He recently admitted that he did indeed bet on baseball, but never against his own team.

If Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa even come close to sniffing the Hall of Fame, Rose should be walking through the hallowed halls a few steps ahead of them.

Where Rose may have broken the rules, he never compromised the integrity of the game unlike the new generation of baseball players which made a mockery of the game. Those players all have hall of fame numbers, but also are dealing with the stigma of performance enhancing drugs. Before the steroids issue was raised, it seemed as if Bonds was trying to knock a beach ball out of a playpen instead of baseball out of a ballpark.

Where Rose may have violated the rules, it’s a bit unfair to say that Rose put the integrity of the game in question. This is the same man who separated Ray Fosse’s shoulder in a home plate collision -- in the All-Star game. This Charlie Hustle, the man who popularized the head-first slide and rarely wasn’t covered in dirt. This is the same man who said he would “Walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball.”

Admittedly, Rose may not have the cleanest record in the world. He admitted to betting on baseball and he did time federal prison due to tax evasion. He waited 15 years to make his gambling admission in his book, ‘My Prison Without Bars.’

Before snobby baseball purists go on rants on how character should be part of the Hall of Fame equation, they need to take a walk around Cooperstown and see what’s already there.
Ty Cobb, one of the best players of all-time, once assaulted a man in a wheelchair, slapped a black elevator operator because he was ‘uppity,’ a black construction worker and a black groundskeeper. He also choked the groundskeeper's wife when she protested.

Next, let’s meet Cap Anson. In 1883, Anson refused to play in a game because a black player was on the field. After being told he would forfeit the game and gate receipts, he played the game against his will. Later that year, Anson again showed up to find black players on the field. Befor the game began, he yelled out, ‘ get that nigger off the field!’ He is almost single-handedly credited for drawing the color line in baseball until Jackie Robinson broke though.

While we’re weeding out the bad seeds, Mickey Mantle has to go as well. He was an alcoholic and set a bad example for the kids. Babe Ruth? A womanizer who went outside his marriage plenty of times and overall glutton who gorged himself on alcohol and fried chicken.

Apparently, character has nothing to do with it at all. What this has the most to do with is the crusading sportswriters who are on a moral quest to ‘protect’ the game. These are the same sportswriters who seemed to miss all of the steroid use though they had daily access to Major League clubhouses.

This is the Baseball Hall of Fame, not the character hall of fame. It’s time to let in the man who played every game like he was about to lose his roster spot.