Pete Rose

To some, including myself, baseball is the greatest sport that has ever been played. It is a game played by two opposing teams made of multiple players, but only nine players per team play at the same time. To be part of one of the thirty teams that get to play professional baseball, a player has to play the game extremely well (www.baseballhalloffame.com). When a player plays the game better than most have played he gets rewarded, usually with lots of money in a big contract. Then there are those rare players, the 244 elite players of the game that have already been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Being inducted in the Hall of Fame is the utmost of baseball fame. The players listed are remembered forever. This brings me to my argument. Pete Rose should be allowed induction into the Hall of Fame.

Now, most of the baseball critics and brass do not want Pete Rose inducted. They claim that his illegal betting on baseball games should keep him out of the Hall of Fame. Almost all of the "highly questionable" evidence that Commissioner Bart Giamatti held was derived from former friends and associates of Rose. "Up to $30,000 per day", so some of Roses' "close" friends say. These former friends of Rose are Tommy Gioiosa, Donald Stenger, Mike Fry, and Paul Janszen. This evidence is what prompted the banishment from baseball of Pete Rose, which he signed. The evidence was enough for the Commissioner. In 1989, baseball's Commissioner Bart Giammati suspended Pete Rose from association with professional baseball for life for gambling (Reston 1997). Rose also spent five months in a minimum-security prison for tax evasion in 1990. He did not report cash money he accepted for signing baseballs and photographs at baseball card shows (Reston 1997). It is still to this day not proven that Rose 'did' bet on the baseball team that he was managing. Rose himself still holds true to his statement that he never bet on the game of baseball. Evidence is minimal and it has been over ten years, yet he is still ineligible to be voted into the Hall of Fame. If it was left up to his statistics, he should have been inducted years ago. There are a handful of the 244 elites that are in the Hall of Fame that did far worse things than gamble on the game of baseball or evade paying their taxes. For instance, the beloved Ty Cobb was a horrible racist and once admitted killing a man. One day while walking in Detroit, he stepped in freshly poured asphalt. Then a construction worker, named Fred Collins, who just happened to be black, yelled at him. Cobb responded by slapping Collins to the ground. Cobb was found guilty by the courts, and received a suspended sentence. Collins filed a civil suit, but settled out of court for $75. Ty Cobb had to deal with the law in one form or another many different times for striking black men (www.totalbaseball.com). The powers that run the baseball organization seem to turn their eyes, quite conveniently, away from any number of wife-beaters, and drug addict's everyday. They let known, proven criminals continue to play the game, but not Rose. There is no 'absolute proof' that Pete Rose did bet on baseball. So, why is it that a baseball player with so many of the greatest statistics is left out of the Hall of Fame?