If you would have told me a decade ago that Pete Rose would one day be welcomed back into the Major League Baseball fold, I would have told you, “Don’t bet on it.”
Sure, old Charlie Hustle was one of the game’s all-time greats. He played baseball the way Michael Moore approaches a Burger King: voraciously. Rose left everything out on the diamond and notched records that are other-worldly. Not even Elon Musk’s robots will touch Rose’s 4,256 career hits total.
It’s hard to imagine anyone playing baseball with more heart, more joy than Pete Rose. Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray once wrote that Rose was as “uncomplicated as a summer day, as instinctive as a hound dog.”
“He was born to hunt, or, in his case, play baseball. He never wanted to do anything else. He never could do anything else,” Murray idyllically described the baseball side of the Hit King in his 1993 autobiography.
Turns out Pete could gamble, too. And he did. A lot. And then he got caught. Not at the casino or the horse track. That wouldn’t have mattered. Rose bet on baseball, the game he loved and counted on almost as much as his run of good luck. He wagered on his own teams, and his luck ran out. Major League Baseball has long frowned on betting on baseball games in which the bettor “has a duty to perform.” It’s the kind of thing that will get you banned from baseball for life, even if you’re the hits leader, even if you’re Charlie Hustle.
Lying about it and intermittently smugly shrugging your shoulders about your baseball gambling problem will only make things worse. And it has over the years for Rose. He was great at baseball, not so good at contrition.
Dying to Get In
But as stodgy as it can be, things are subject to change in the MLB. Just look at the stupid extra innings ghost runner rule or the abominable DH injected into the National League. The commissioner of Major League Baseball will tell you that there is no room in America’s pastime for players gambling on the game. And then he’ll tell you that last message was brought to you by FanDuel, the “co-exclusive Official Sports Betting Partner of MLB.” Gambling is paying a bigger share of the bills for a league that has had its share of revenue problems.
So, long odds be damned, Pete Rose is officially back in baseball. MLB this week announced it is removing Rose from the league’s list of the permanently banned. After 36 years in the wilderness, Charlie Hustle is coming back home. And he is now eligible for the ultimate prize, induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Of course, Rose had to die to get back into the good graces of Major League Baseball. The announcement comes almost eight months after he died at the age of 83. Manfred said permanent ineligibility “ends upon the passing of the disciplined individual.”
“To establish clarity for the administration of the Major League Rules, the decision in this matter shall apply to individuals in the past or future who are posthumously on the permanently ineligible list,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.
Did you get that, you eight men out? That’s right, the great “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and his comrades on the infamous, World Series-losing 1919 White Sox (Black Sox) are off the banned list, too. These were ballplayers with solid batting averages and better names. The kind of names that, like helmet-less, cup-less summers, made the early days of professional baseball so tough. Arnold “Chick” Gandil. George “Buck” Weaver. Oscar “Happy” Felsch. Charles “Swede” Risberg.
You can imagine these long-dead diamond giants, suddenly back in baseball, stepping onto Rate Field on Chicago’s South Side and asking two questions: “What the hell happened to Comiskey?” and, “Is this heaven?”
No, it’s hell. The 10th commissioner of baseball finally ends your lifetime ban decades after you’ve died. Makes a guy want to disappear into an Iowa cornfield. Quite cruel, really.
‘I’ve Been Dead Since 1964’
I think of how some of the “resurrected” ballplayers might handle MLB’s decree …
In a joint statement released this morning, former White Sox center fielder Oscar “Happy” Felsch and shortstop Charles “Swede” Risberg expressed their joy — and relief — that the long ban had been lifted. They also expressed their gratitude to Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and the league at large for ending their painful excommunication from the game they love more than life itself. In fact, both men said they were looking forward to being back at the ballpark.
“Put me in, coach. I’m ready to play. I’ve kept in shape and I’m ready to take some hot shots at short and choke up on my Slugger,” declared Swede Risberg, a downright duke of the double play who has been dead for 50 years.
Happy Felsch quipped, “I couldn’t be Happier. I, too, cherish the thought of slapping the mitt and feeling the tar on my bat, rounding second for a quick triple and hearing the crowd root for me. But I’ve been dead since 1964, so you’ll have to play the game at Wisconsin Memorial Park cemetery if you want me in the lineup.”
No doubt about it, these titans of the diamond are thrilled at their return to the Major Leagues, into the exciting modern-age of baseball, but they lament their inability to step up to the plate or run in the outfield grass — or move at all, really.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
Jesus Christ is King
