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Topic: Sports & Entertainment
Ethics and Pete Rose (and never the twain shall meet…)
(2/11/2004)
Now that Pete Rose has (after 14 years
of lying about it…indignantly, no less) admitted that he bet on baseball
and his own team while managing the Cincinnati Reds, there has been an
astounding amount of oxygen flagrantly wasted as pundits and commentators
argue about what should happen next, as if the answers were not straightforward
and obvious…and they are. Here, in as brief form as possible, are
those answers.
- Should baseball lift its
lifetime ban on Rose? Of course not. Players and managers with direct
control over games cannot be seen as dealing with gamblers, and this
goes double for baseball, which had a major gambling scandal that nearly
killed the sport. Rose knew the punishment for gambling, did it anyway,
and richly earned his banishment. Moreover, there is every reason to
believe that this compulsively dishonest, tax evading, self-centered
hustler cannot be trusted. This wasn’t a one-time fall from grace; for
Rose, cheating is a life-style.
- Should Rose be treated more leniently because of
his batting records? Absolutely not! If anything, he should be treated
more stringently. As a star and (statistically at least) a baseball
great, his descent into the slime has done more damage to baseball than
any .220 hitter could ever achieve. Perhaps the hardest concept for
people to get their minds around when dealing with celebrities, stars,
and the famous is this: great accomplishments do not earn the right
to misbehave. To the contrary: fame and success creates the responsibility
to adhere to higher standards of conduct. Every time society sends the
opposite message, it guarantees trouble in the future. People admire
and seek to emulate individuals who have done important, remarkable,
and well-publicized things, and they always will. When such celebrities
embrace anti-social, illegal or unethical conduct, they give credibility
to that conduct with some admirers even as they damage their credibility
with others.
- Should Rose be admitted to the Hall of Fame?
Oh, I don’t know, why don’t we see what the voters think? The Hall of
Fame is a self-defining institution. If the voters think that getting
more hits than anyone who ever played the game out-weighs a frontal
assault on the game’s integrity, then that’s that. Rose (as far as we
know) never bet on baseball while he was a player (although I , for
one, wouldn’t bet on THAT), so one can argue that his character as a
player is at least as sterling as some of the other talented felons,
thugs, drunks and reprobates that are enshrined at Cooperstown. The
official criteria for election do include consideration of character
and behavior, and this is appropriate; it does not explain how much
weight these factors should be given. Dennis Eckersley, recently elected
for his relief-pitching prowess, once admitted that he lost many a game
as a starter for the Boston Red Sox because he was drunk as a skunk.
As someone who cared quite a bit about the outcome of those games at
the time, I don’t think Eck was doing much for the integrity of the
game by convincing fans that the Sox had someone on the mound who could
put a "yakker" on the inside corner, when in fact he couldn’t
walk a straight line. But Eckersley got sober, and the voters decided
that his post-hangover career outweighed the happy hours. If they now
decide that they want to stink up the Hall with gamblers, fine: I won’t
be taking my son there, but they have the right to align values as they
see fit. In that case, the Hall should at least adopt George Will’s
suggestion that a line on Rose’s plaque remind the world that he was
banned from baseball for life.
- Does good character still have a place in professional
sports? Baseball has been criticized for its position on Rose by
the ever-vocal "times have changed" crowd, whose argument
has always seemed to be that since society has slipped some distance
down the civilization scale we might as well take a toboggan the rest
of the way. However, the sport is to be admired and thanked for making
a dogged effort to keep baseball as true to traditional values, despite
all the money, media attention, and hype. While baseball teams have
kept players accused of spousal abuse out of line-ups, the NBA continues
to celebrate a star undergoing a prosecution for rape. While baseball
provides us All-Star Game festivities featuring nostalgia and home-run
derbies, the NFL gives its audience crotch-grabbing and a surprise strip-tease.
Baseball is torn between recognizing the accomplishments
of one of its greatest players, and reaffirming its core values. It isn’t
a pleasant choice, but it should be an easy one. The best interest of
the sport, its fans, and the culture is for Major League Baseball to make
it clear that Pete Rose and his values have no place in the National Pastime.
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