Commissioner Rob Manfred disclosed last week that Pete Rose had formally requested reinstatement from baseball’s permanently ineligible list. Manfred told reporters he was prepared to deal with the request “on the merits.”
Manfred’s replacement of Bud Selig in the office of commissioner has resurrected talk of the possibility of Rose’s reinstatement after a quarter of a century. Rose last applied for reinstatement in 1997, but Selig never acted on the request, saying neither yes nor no.
Rose’s ever hopeful fans apparently think Manfred’s mere mention that he is prepared to act on the request suggests that he will act favorably and reinstate Rose. If that’s what they think, they are getting way ahead of Manfred.
All he is saying is he will consider the request. He is not saying he will grant it. Manfred isn’t going to ask me for my opinion on the matter, but I do believe he will speak to others before making a decision. Those others, I believe, will include Selig and Fay Vincent, another former commissioner.
Along with me, they will not include Christopher Caldwell, an editor, whose opinion piece in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal epitomizes the reaction of Rose advocates to Manfred’s willingness to consider Rose’s request.
“Baseball’s moral pariah is, in certain respects,” Caldwell writes, “a moral paragon.”
He’s joking, right? Pete Rose a moral paragon? I’ve known and followed Rose for 45 years, and he is no moral paragon. The words Pete Rose and moral don’t fit in the same paragraph, let alone the same sentence. Caldwell obviously doesn’t know Rose or his history other than he always hustled, ran to first base when he was walked and slid headfirst into bases.
But more about Caldwell’s pro-Rose arguments later. I’d rather read what Vincent has to say about a Rose reinstatement. If Caldwell wants to talk moral paragons, I’ll point him in the direction of Vincent, the most moral man I have ever known.
Reinstate Rose, Vincent wrote as a guest columnist in this space March 1, and deterrent (Major League Rule 21) is meaningless.
“On the topic of whether Pete Rose should be pardoned by the new Commissioner, Rob Manfred, I begin with two important contentions. One is that the Rose case is not about Pete Rose but is rather about whether baseball should alter the deterrent against gambling that has been so effective. The second is that any commissioner who alters that deterrent then owns the full risks of any future gambling scandals that might occur.”
Selig has not expressed a view on the issue; if he wanted to, he had 17 years to do so after Rose applied for reinstatement in 1997. I think it’s unlikely that Selig would advise Manfred to reinstate Rose because then he would be saying “I could have reinstated him and saved you the aggravation and possible criticism, but I didn’t want to be responsible in the event the decision backfired.”
If Manfred is torn in any way on a decision, I offer a solution, a novel way to enable the commissioner to allow Rose back but not immediately.
You might know the name Joe Jackson; if not, try Shoeless Joe Jackson. He was one of eight members of the Chicago White Sox who, despite their acquittal in court, were banished from baseball after the 1920 season by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis for throwing the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.
Although Jackson acknowledged in his grand jury testimony that he received $5,000 for his role in the World Series development, there has always been a question about his involvement. For one thing, given his level of intelligence, some people doubted that Jackson understood what he was doing. For another, he didn’t attend a meeting at a hotel in New York at which the other players agreed to the World Series scheme.
Finally, there was Jackson’s performance against the Reds in the Series. It was not the performance of someone trying to lose. He batted .375 with a .563 slugging percentage and a .394 on-base percentage, all Series highs. But after producing even more impressive numbers for the 1920 season, he was banished, placed on the permanently ineligible list, where he remains today.
Jackson didn’t play as long as Rose and didn’t amass as many hits, didn’t slide headfirst either, but he was a better hitter. If Rose is to be restored to Major League Baseball, how can Jackson be ignored?
It only makes sense that before Rose is removed from the permanently ineligible list, Jackson should be accorded similar treatment.
So let me propose a solution. Jackson has been on the permanently ineligible list for 95 years. Rose has been on it for 25 years. Reinstate Jackson now and Rose 70 years from now.
Under that plan, Rose, who turns 74 next month, wouldn’t be around then to work in baseball or serve as the game’s ambassador he thinks he could be, but he could still be voted on for the Hall of Fame. Jackson died in 1951 at the age of 64 but could have his turn on a Hall of Fame ballot.
Over the years Jackson has had people advocating for his reinstatement. In the latter years of his life, Ted Williams was one of them but was as unsuccessful as any of the others.
One baseball official said the commissioner’s office heard from Jackson supporters but no one from his family. At one point, he added, Selig had baseball’s historian, Jerome Holtzman, look into anything involving Jackson, but nothing came of it.
Rose fanatics don’t care about anyone but Rose, but they need to understand that Rose is not unique. I understand that they view Jackson as ancient history, but the way I see it, if Manfred wants to act positively on Rose, nothing can happen without it happening to Jackson, too.
Rose rooters might argue that the offenses were different. Jackson, they would argue, cheated by participating in a plot to throw the 1919 World Series. Rose’s gambling didn’t affect the Reds.
“Giamatti’s sentence obeyed the letter of baseball’s antigambling rules. But it violated the spirit,” Caldwell wrote in the Journal. “The rules were put in place to prevent cheating, not betting. And cheating is something that no thinking person, then or now, has suggested Pete Rose would do.”
I suppose that depends on one’s perception of cheating. Rose has never admitted it, but as I have previously noted, John Dowd uncovered evidence that while Rose did bet on the Reds he did not bet on Reds’ games Bill Gullickson started, meaning he didn’t trust Gullickson to win.
By establishing that pattern, Rose was telling bookies he expected the Reds to lose those games. I would call that cheating, but Caldwell very likely didn’t know about Gullickson games because he possibly never read and studied the Dowd report.
In telling reporters last week that he had heard from Rose, Manfred said he wasn’t near a decision.
“In terms of the process,” Manfred said, “what I’ve said is that I’ll be in touch with Mr. Rose’s representatives, and we’ll decide what’s necessary in terms of process from their perspective – what I think I need in order to get up to speed on the Dowd Report, what Commissioner Giamatti decided – and then obviously give Mr. Rose and his representative an opportunity to let me know what they think I need to understand about the situation. Until I work through that, and I intend to work through it as a private matter, I’m not going to say anything about a timetable.
“When you have a request like this, I think it’s important, and, in fact, incumbent on me, to understand all that went on, what led Commissioner Giamatti to where he landed on the issue, what the agreement was that was reached and why that agreement was reached. And so I need to really start from square one in terms of those facts.”
As Giamatti’s deputy, Vincent was intimately involved in the process that led to Rose’s agreement to be placed on the permanently ineligible list. That’s why Manfred will talk to Vincent. He will very likely also talk to Steve Greenberg, who became Vincent’s deputy when Vincent succeeded the late Giamatti as commissioner.
Manfred is not required to talk to Tony Clark, the head of the players union, about the Rose matter because the union has no say on Rose’s status and Manfred’s decision. However, Clark expressed his view last week, telling reporters in spring training he would “love to see Pete reinstated.”
Asked why, Clark said, “He made a decision. He made a decision that was not the right decision. He made a decision that he has paid a price for.”
He was asked if he believed Rose has served his time. “Yes,” he said. “I would love for there to be a consideration made, on behalf of the commissioner’s office that would take that into account in reinstating him.”
Clark was asked if he would favor full reinstatement. After he thought about the question for several seconds, he said only, “Reinstatement.”
While acknowledging that the union has no say in Manfred’s decision, Clark said the issue still matters. “It does from the standpoint of Pete being one of the fraternity,” Clark said, “Pete having found himself in the situation that he has for the length of time that he has. To the extent that we don’t have any input necessarily into whether he’s reinstated or not. But it is something that, as a past member of the players association, we obviously pay attention to.”
Another faction of players has expressed privately an opposite view. Members of the Hall of Fame have long opposed Rose’s election to the Hall. Some have said they would not return to the Hall if he were elected.