Keith Strudler: Strike Three

Let’s be honest. After any breakup, there’s no real chance of “just being friends.” So the idea that excommunicated baseball legend Pete Rose just wants to be friends with his lifelong love is simply fool’s play.  But that’s his hope, since it’s now clear there will be no renewed romance, no reconciliation. That’s the mandate of MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, who this week denied Rose’s third attempt at reinstatement since his lifelong ban in 1989. Rose was banned, of course, for gambling on baseball as a manager for the Cincinnati Reds.

Rose’s final hearing apparently didn’t go well. Among other things, Rose admitted he still gambles on baseball – legally at least. And he wasn’t fully contrite on his past transgressions, which included gambling on his own team for thousands of dollars at a time. As Jim Gray pointed out years ago in what may still be history’s most uncomfortable televised sports interview, Rose may still be his own worst enemy, never realizing the power of the apology, nor the perceived depth of his sin. All which make Pete Rose a remarkably unsympathetic character, someone who can’t figure out that the most powerful word in the English language is “sorry.”

That of course means that Rose will never find his way to Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame, since the Hall follows Major League Baseball’s directives – even though they don’t have to. It also means he won’t be a batting coach or manager or anything inside a major league clubhouse. That is quite different than other largely reviled former baseball players, including Barry Bonds, who’s now a hitting coach with the Miami Marlins, and Mark McGuire, a coach for the San Diego Padres. Both of them, along with others like Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa, are eligible for the Hall – although none of them have come particularly close with voters. Still, their sins – largely assumed instead of proven – haven’t kept them from their livelong place of work.

It’s been long discussed the difference between taking PED’s and betting on baseball. One threatens fairness in sport; the other its mere existence. Undetermined outcome is truly the defining characteristic of sport, the difference between that and a professional wrestling. That’s a lot different than cheating, which, let’s be honest, has essentially become a defining characteristic of sport as well. So we’ll begrudgingly tolerate drug users but never condone gamblers, fair or not.

The reasoning behind this is questionable. It’s unlikely Rose ever tried to lose a game to win a bet, and it’s also reasonable that guys like Bonds and McGuire artificially changed the outcome of games, seasons, even titles. There may be baseball pitchers who lost their jobs because a chemically enhanced slugger ruined their fragile ERAs. As much as gambling represents the apex of sporting transgressions, this is far more judgement than fact. So while Pete Rose spends the rest of his baseball life at arm’s length, if not more, A-Rod was back in uniform last season. At least from a distance, it appears to be selective justice.

So the question becomes, did Manfred and baseball make the right call? Should the league and its allied institutions – like Cooperstown – be in the business of banning some of its most important historical artifacts? I suppose it depends on your perspective on sports its larger meaning. If we truly believe that sport is a microcosm of and perhaps an exemplar for our larger social world, then yes, you can’t let Pete Rose back in. Rose broke the most hallowed of sports laws, whether you agree with it or not, and our world is one of crime and punishment. So, letting Pete Rose back into baseball is the equivalent of appointing a convicted felon to the Supreme Court. Once you cross a certain line, there’s no coming back.

But, if you believe, like I do, that sport – particularly professional sports like Major League Baseball – are entertainment commodities that exist within a corporate capitalistic free-market framework, and businesses exist not by a code of law but rather the will of enterprise, than yes, this ban feels far more personal than justifiable. It’s easy to get behind banning Pete Rose, if for no other reason than he seems like a jerk and a compulsive liar, which seems to qualify him to run for President. But I’m not certain that warrants a lifetime ban from the business in which he once thrived.

Now, if I were a team owner, would I hire Pete Rose in my organization? Definitely not. And would I vote him into the Hall if I had a vote? Hard to say. But those are different questions, ones that would leave Pete Rose no one to blame but himself, as opposed to the powerful commissioner’s office he currently calls his enemy.

Regardless, that disposition is not going to change. Let’s face it, in love, war, and baseball, there’s no such thing as “just friends.”

 
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