For baseball's sake, keep Rose out

All of us sportswriters are in this virtual press box at World Sports Blogs, so it makes it kind of difficult to really get to know one another on this budding site.

I mean, there's no free buffets, locker rooms, or lame press conferences where we can congregate, laugh at coaches' canned quotes, shoot the bull, or, better yet, argue with each other.

With that admittedly murky backdrop, I am now going to publicly disagree with one of our better columnists, Justice B. Hill.

Disclosure: I do not know Mr. Hill, and have never argued with him before.
I do know good, thought-provoking copy when I read it, however, and felt compelled today to take the other side of the man's well-penned assertion that Pete Rose deserves a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Before providing supporting copy to buttress my argument, a lame attempt to curry favor with Mr. Hill, who had no idea all this was coming.

He is 100 percent correct when he argues that Rickey Henderson was a better leadoff hitter than Rose. That one isn't even close in my book.

"The Man of Steal" was one of greatest offensive forces that ever played the game. Yeah, he stole bases with reckless abandon, but he also could hit for power and was a run-scoring machine. For my money, he was the most disruptive force to ever play the game. The guy drove pitchers crazy.

Not that Pete Rose was chopped liver...
Good grief, the guy has more hits than anybody in the game. But it was how he played the game that separated him from the rest.

Nobody, and I mean, nobody, played harder than he did.
I'll never forget the 1970 All-Star Game -- a meaningless contest -- when Rose knocked Cleveland catcher Ray Fosse head over heels to score the game's winning run in the 12th inning. Fosse was never the same player after that brutal collision, but it helped cement Rose as the game's greatest competitor.

The younger set might not be aware, but when Rose drew a walk he actually sprinted down to first base -- every time.

Charlie Hustle? You bet, and then some...

But for all the good his hustling did him on the field, his hustling in the dugout would be his ultimate undoing.

Rose was a serial gambler.
The guy didn't just bet on sports, he bet on baseball.
He didn't just bet on baseball, he bet on his own baseball team.
He didn't just bet on his own baseball team, he bet on his own team when he was coaching that team in the dugout.

Rose didn't just break baseball's sacred rule against gambling on the sport, he obliterated it.

And when it all came out in the famous Dowd Report in 1989, one person above all finally came around to the notion that what went on was so potentially destructive, and so below board that permanent placement on the ineligible list was the only prudent course: Pete Rose.

Yes, it was Rose who voluntarily agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball.

He did so in exchange for Major League Baseball dropping the investigation; that he could apply for reinstatement in one year (for all the good it would do him); and most important to Rose, that he did not have to admit or deny that he ever bet on baseball.

No, that last part would astonishingly have to wait a full 15 years. By that time, the bungling Rose had managed to convince all but his most ardent supporters that he was not only arguably the game's greatest cheat, but also its biggest liar, and profiteer.

True to form, Rose's honesty came with a price when he owned up to all his transgressions in a 2004 book, My Prison Without Bars.
Charlie Hustle, indeed.

So now the game's greatest cheater and liar, had managed to make a handsome profit on the long-awaited truth.

Pete Rose knowingly broke baseball's ironclad rule that prohibits betting on the game -- much less on his own team when he was its coach. Then he spent the next 15 years lying about it. Then he profited handsomely from all the chaos he caused when he finally came clean.

Rose has already gotten way more than he deserves. I respectfully submit that to further reward him with a place in the Hall of Fame wouldn't be justice, Mr. Hill.

Peace.