Rose leaves mixed feelings; others will, too

by Gary Shelton on October 2, 2024

in general

Wednesday, 4 a.m.

All that is left of him is the controversy.

The lies, gone. The controversy, erased. The memories, faded. All the things he accomplished as a player, and all the memorabilia he sold when his life turned into that of a huckster. All erased.

Pete Rose is gone, and all that really remains is to measure his considerable impact as a player versus his breaking of the first rule of the game: That shalt not gamble. Rose did, and for years, he lied about it. Because of that, the door to Cooperstown has been locked, presumably forever, and even now, fans will argue about Rose and the Hall of Fame.

Well, get used to it.

You’re going to have these mixed feelings for a long time now.

Granted, you probably made up your mind about Rose a long time ago. The evidence hasn’t changed. Rose’s rhetoric hadn’t changed. The signs in baseball clubhouses, insisting that gambling was baseball’s great sin, haven’t changed.

Still, Americans love to forgive their celebrities, and Rose’s play entertained a lot of people. And, true, gambling doesn’t seem like quite the scarlet letter that it once did. Not with the prevalence of betting sites in bed with professional sports.

So how do you feel? Should Rose be in the Hall? Or should the doors be locked?

Me? I’d vote thumbs-down. There were just too many lies, especially when good men agreed they were lies.

But here’s the thing. The mixed feelings that the death of Rose stirred up are just the beginning.

When Barry Bonds, who had Hall of Fame numbers long before steroids, dies, will you feel hte same?

How about Roger Clemens? Roger Clemens. Alex Rodriguez? Rafael Palmeiro? Mark McGwire? Sammy Sosa?

Do you go back to Joe Jackson? To Buck Weaver?

It is reaching the point where there are as many A-level Hall of Famers outside the Hall than in it?

I’ve proposed this before. How about the Hall not running from the scandals of the sport? How about realizing that a player’s career is a portrait, and every aspect should be represented.

I’d add a Shame Room to the Hall of Fame. I’d  put Rose in there, and Bonds and A-Rod and Jackson and McGwire. I’d have a list of their shortcomings with each display. That way, the good lessons — and the bad — can be discussed from germination to generation.

And, yes, shame Is the bottom line here. It’s a shame that Rose let his legacy rot. It’s a shame that he constantly lied about it. It’s a shame that he hung around as a sideshow for so long. I valued those memories of Rose, and he stripped them of me.

Sad.

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