Rose is only Thorns for Baseball

I grew up during the Cincinnati Big Red Machine era. As a little league catcher, my favorite player was Johnny Bench. I twitched my arm like Joe Morgan always did at bat. And then there was Pete Rose, the player who got on base with the ugliest looking hits from sheer willpower.

As a player, Rose had a grim determination to reach first base, followed with an equally powerful urge to reach home. Charlie Hustle was a role model for me—something could come from nothing if you play hard enough. There was no flash or elegance from Pete Rose, only a will to win. As an adult, I realize his traits made him a miserable person to be around. But as a kid without flash or elegance, I appreciated how he played.

A nice exemption

Yesterday, Major League Baseball [MLB] capitulated to Donald Trump’s whim and reinstated Pete Rose. Trump and Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred met in March after Trump made his support for Pete Rose rehabilitation clear via social media. Who knows how that conversation went, probably some variation on “Baseball has a nice anti-trust exemption, it’d be a shame if anything happened to it.” Flip the calendar to May and Trump gets his publicly stated wish. Who knows what he extorted for private gain, like a slot for team ownership, but Rose is now eligible for the Hall of Fame.

MLB announces Rose’s rehabilitation with the fig leaf of also lifting the ban on Shoeless Joe Jackson. Style points for the Commissioner on capitulating without appearing to simply be rolling over for a fascist dictator’s directive. However, while both cases involve gambling, they are not even close to the same violation of trust everyone has in the game.

Eight Men Out

Admittedly, my knowledge of Shoeless Joe Jackson comes primarily from the John Sayles’ film Eight Men Out. But from everything I have ever read, the argument around Jackson is if he was part of throwing the 1919 World Series as one of the Black Sox who cut a deal with gamblers to lose. Whatever your opinion, I have not seen anything about Jackson having any ongoing gambling connections. Only this World Series scandal got him banned. While shameful to purposefully lose to profit from gambling, this was a discrete event done before players had clear restrictions regarding gambling.

Baseball got its first commissioner out of this World Series scandal, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, brought in to assure the public the game is played fair. I used to joke the closest thing the United States had to a Pope was the Commissioner of Baseball. Then came Bud Selig and Leo XIV, but I digress. The Office of Commissioner was to drill into baseball culture that gambling is a violation of trust and an ever-present risk to the good name of Major League Baseball.

The spread matters

Baseball manager Pete Rose committed a very different violation of trust. Across the 1980s, Rose bet on his own teams. He rationalized saying he never bet against his team, trying to demonstrate some control over his gambling addiction. However, sports betting is not simply who wins or who loses—it is the spread that matters. Bets on how many or few runs a team wins by are still violations of trust.

How did Rose manage his teams to cover the spread? Did Rose press a pitcher too hard to head off that extra run to protect a bet? Did he throttle back a roster late in the game, shaving runs to satisfy some gambling debt? Who knows the injuries or lost player opportunities that rose from his bets? Every game Pete Rose managed should have an asterisk denoting the possible effects on outcomes from managing with an eye on his bets.

Cautionary tales are needed

Shoeless Joe Jackson was a cautionary tale over decades for major league players. A great like Jackson lost his ticket to the show through gambling. Rose should have served as a similar tale, especially in this era of commonplace sports betting. Hanging a hall of fame plaque in Cooperstown for Rose is far less important than demonstrating to generations of players that integrity matters.

Trump wants Rose rehabilitated as his tale to show power wins over integrity, that holding yourself accountable to standards beyond your own needs is for losers. This is the kind of story fascists always tell. Major League Baseball should have never allowed Trump to hijack the game’s history and integrity for MAGA politics. But it did, and that is as much a shame as the Black Sox in 1919.