Joe Posnanski (IMO, the best sportswriter currently in America) is doing a series of articles for the top 100 baseball players in his view. Pete Rose is one of them, and he wrote essentially the equivalent of two pieces--one detailing Rose the player and the person, one detailing the permanent ban saga. This is what he wrote about Rose getting banned (and this is from someone who's clearly a fan of Rose the player):
Bonus Rose coverage! (For a few players on the Baseball 100, there simply isn’t room to get everything in … so I have written bonus essays for them.)
There are so many misconceptions about Pete Rose’s permanent suspension and Hall of Fame eligibility. Here is the basic timeline:
February 1989: Rose went to have a private meeting with baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth. The New York Times reported that the meeting was about Rose’s gambling.
March 1989: Ueberroth, having been advised that Sports Illustrated was about to publish an exposé of Rose’s longtime gambling on baseball, announced that MLB was had started an investigation into “serious allegations.”
April 1, 1989: A. Bartlett Giamatti became commissioner of baseball. The last thing he wanted was a nasty fight with one of baseball’s greatest figures. He was a man who had loved baseball all his life. But he was stuck with it.
June through late-August 1989: There were numerous back-and-forth fights, with Giamatti insisting on having a hearing and Rose suing baseball to prevent it.
Aug. 24, 1989: Rose was permanently banned from baseball.
So here’s the heart of the story: I have no doubt that Giamatti wanted to make a quiet deal. He never wanted it to come to the permanent suspension. And he had a plan to get through it, one that now seems quite sensible.
See, there are actually two parts to Baseball’s Rule 21, the “Thou shalt not gamble” rule:
- The first part states that any player who bets on a baseball game they are not involved in will be declared ineligible for one year.
- The second part states that any player who bets any sum on a game they are involved in will be declared permanently ineligible.
You see the difference, obviously. If Rose bet on the Astros-Pirates game, it’s against the rules but that’s a one-year ban. It is betting on your own team that makes it last forever. And Giamatti gave every indication that he was willing to simply have Rose admit to gambling on baseball (but not his own team), suspend him for a year and then spend that time at least pretending to reconfigure his life. That seemed reasonable to him. Giamatti already knew that Rose had bet on the Reds and probably had bet on the Reds to lose, but he seemed willing to overlook that so that he did not have to permanently ban one of baseball’s greatest heroes.
But, alas, a Rose is a Rose. He defiantly refused. He obnoxiously refused. He wasn’t going to admit betting on a single game. He wasn’t going to change his life one bit.
And he did what he knew how to do: He fought. He sued Giamatti and MLB. He tore at Giamatti’s integrity repeatedly in interviews. He refused to meet with Giamatti and he continuously called the whole thing a witch hunt.
Rose won a couple of battles. He found a Cincinnati judge who issued a temporary restraining order against Giamatti. Another Cincinnati judge attacked Giamatti for “prejudging Rose.” The fight grew nastier and nastier, and Rose refused to quit managing and snarled that nobody was going to take baseball away from him.
But his lawyers knew — in a way that Rose probably never did — that these were nothing but stall tactics, that sooner or later he would have to cut a deal. And on Aug. 24, 1989, the deal was done … and it was the worst possible deal Rose could have cut for himself. It was reported as a settlement, but it was nothing of the kind.
Baseball suspended Rose forever and got him to sign an agreement stating so.
And Pete Rose got … nothing at all.
From the agreement: “Peter Edward Rose acknowledges that the commissioner has a factual basis to impose the penalty provided herein, and hereby accepts the penalty imposed … and agrees not to challenge that penalty in court or otherwise. He also agrees that he will not institute any legal proceedings of any nature against the commissioner or any of his representatives.”
Oh, the Rose team insisted that they did get something … they insisted that they got MLB to stop their investigation of Rose (which presumably would have led to some pretty bad stuff) and they insisted that they were able to free Rose from admitting that he bet on baseball.
But neither of those things held up. Yes, MLB stopped the investigation, but so what? They had already given him the baseball death penalty. As far as Rose not admitting that he bet on baseball, yes, it’s true that he didn’t say the words. But he did fully accept a lifetime ban. Why do that if you are not admitting you bet on baseball?
The Rose team deluded themselves. They felt entirely certain that Rose would serve a year suspension and then Giamatti and baseball would let him back in. That was what Giamatti had wanted at the start.
“This is a very sad day,” Rose said. “I’ve been in baseball three decades and to think I am going to be out for a very short period of time hurts. … I’ve never looked forward to a birthday like I’m looking forward to my new daughter’s birthday. Because two days after that is when I can apply for reinstatement.”
But, well, two things. One, Giamatti made it abundantly clear that (1) he believed Rose bet on baseball and (2) that it would be a longshot for Rose to ever be let back into the game. He said he would keep an open mind but he went out of his way to say that there was no precedent for a permanently banned player being reinstated.
“It isn’t up to me,” he said. “It is up to Mr. Rose to reconfigure his life in ways I would assume he would prefer. I am not here to prescribe them, to dictate them or to diagnose.”
And the second thing, as you know, is that eight days later, Bart Giamatti died. He was replaced by his dear friend Fay Vincent, who remains one of the most passionate hardliners against Rose.
No, Pete Rose has never come close to being reinstated and it’s pretty clear he never will be.
But what about the Hall of Fame? That is actually a slightly different story. After Rose was suspended, Giamatti was asked specifically about the Hall and he made it clear that this would be up to the Hall of Fame voters. “When Pete Rose is eligible,” he said, “(BBWAA secretary) Mr. Jack Lang will count the ballots, and you will decide whether he belongs in the Hall of Fame.”
His predecessor as commissioner, Peter Ueberroth, agreed: “I believe Pete Rose will be elected to the Hall of Fame.” Shortly after that, Hall of Fame associate director Bill Guilfoile confirmed that Rose would be on the ballot, and the BBWAA would decide, based on the totality of his baseball life, if Pete Rose belonged in the Hall.
But Vincent, among others, couldn’t see the logic of that. How could someone permanently banned from baseball be given baseball’s greatest honor? In 1990, stories began to emerge that Rose might be removed from the Hall of Fame ballot. The BBWAA was outraged about it. Rose fans were outraged about it. But it was a fait accompli. The Hall of Fame had a vote among its own committee, and it was decided that nobody who has been permanently banned from the game would appear on the Hall of Fame ballot.
Edward Stack, the Hall of Fame director, made it sound like it was purely a coincidence.
“We’re cleaning up our rules of election,” he said. “This is probably something that should have been done years ago. … I don’t remember (Rose’s) name being specifically mentioned. Pete Rose was not the subject of our discussion.”
People will argue whether Rose’s name should appear on the ballot, but I don’t actually think it matters. I don’t think Rose ever would have gotten 75 percent of the vote. I don’t think he will ever get in the Hall of Fame. Yes, there are those who favor putting him in after he dies, which seems particularly cruel, but most of them misunderstand his ban. It’s not a lifetime ban. It’s a permanent ban. I just don’t see how enough momentum builds for removing the ban after he dies.
It’s a sad story. And it is Rose’s own fault — not only for breaking one of baseball’s most cherished rules but for refusing to come clean and accept his punishment right at the start. I feel quite sure that even after all he did, if he had said to Giamatti that he was wrong and he wanted to change his life, he would be in Cooperstown and in baseball today.
https://theathletic.com/1546407/2020/01/27/the-baseball-100-no-60-pete-rose/
(Article is paywalled, The Athletic is a subscription site. What I posted is just a piece of what he wrote, much less than half of the article.)
