THE MEASURE: No, The World Isn’t Fair – Let Charlie Hustle Into the HOF

by Philip Repko*

[Photo above  from Facebook]

When I was about 8 years old, the Phillies games were televised on Sundays, I think on channel 6 in Philadelphia, before it was WPVI.

Bill White, a polished voice and personality, called those games. But I would often listen to the play-by-play of the radio team – Whitey Ashburn, By Saam, and Bill Campbell – even though Bill White was right there on the TV, in black and white splendor, taking care of that business.

I was part of a generation or two of fans who fell in love with baseball on the radio. A great convergence of forces conspired to create those couple of bastions of baseball lovers – limited TV presentations, cheap transistor radios, and scant alternatives for viewing with only 3 or so channels.

My classmate and lifelong friend,  Joe Schauder and I, started living and dying with baseball games during February and March when the Grapefruit League games were broadcast. We listened as if each pitch and inning held the secret to a successful summer. Alas, the Phillies in the late 60s and early 70s were mostly referred to as “hapless.” Nevertheless, we talked about games, and statistics through the spring, all the way up to June and the end of school.

In September, we would reconvene, with so much to talk about. In those days, elementary school buddies simply disappeared from each other’s lives for three months each year.

All of this reminiscence lays the groundwork, I hope, for an explanation of my decision to let Pete Rose into the Hall of Fame. (Of course, it’s not my decision to make. I just think it’s worth explaining why I think it’s time to let him in.)

Pete Rose was on the periphery of my earliest infatuation with baseball. As a primary school fan, and a Phillies one at that, I was bit by the baseball bug without much opportunity for hero worship. Most of the “64 Phillies, the last decent team, were gone when I started watching. Joe and I could talk about Cookie Rojas, or Don Money, or even Tony Taylor and Richie Allen, but the truth is that none of them was great at that point, or they were Phillies players for only a small part of that time. Jim Bunning and Chris Short had been good players, but 1969-1974 was mostly bleak.

But access to the genesis of Phillies’ greatness was there in my pocket-sized radio. In addition, if Joe Garagiola was on TV with a baseball game over the weekend, it was probably a Reds’ game. And the Cincinnati Reds in the 1970s were The Big Red Machine. My first non-Phillies heroes were Bench, Rose, Concepcion, Geronimo, Morgan, and just a few others. It wasn’t fair how good they were. We in Philadelphia excitedly watched the rise of Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, Larry Bowa, Greg Luzinski, Bob Boone, and Garry Maddox, but the Cincinnati Reds, led by Pete Rose, set the standard for greatness.

We thought the Phillies were going to be good, but the Reds were already there. Bench may still be rightfully considered the best catcher in baseball history. Rose is the Hit King, and many of the others named above have been in the Hall of Fame for decades.

photo from Dreamstime.com

But not Pete Rose.

Pete Rose has been languishing on the sidelines for so long that some young fans don’t even know how great of a player he was. Some don’t know who Pete Rose is. That’s wrong too.

Pete Rose played for the Philles in the first half of the 80s, then became a manager afterward. But Rose decided to skirt a sacrosanct rule – one with written and unwritten implications. Pete Rose bet on baseball games in which he was involved.

The written rule was clear, and dating all the way back to Shoeless Joe Jackson and the White Sox scandal, baseball fans with any sense of history knew that even the greats, like Shoeless Joe, forfeited their pedestal when they bet on the game, or even when they could be credited with conspiring to GAMBLE on the game.

The unwritten rule is the one that has kept me rigid in believing that Rose should not have been inducted into the Hall of Fame before now.

The unwritten rule is that you do not risk your reputation or your good name, or undermine the glory of the game by bringing shame to the institution that is Major League Baseball. It does not matter at all if Pete Rose bet exclusively on his teams to win – every time he bet. It does not matter if Pete was driven by his otherworldly competitive spirit to believe, and put his money where his heart was, by gambling on his own team’s chances.

Photo from Amazon.com

You don’t bet on baseball. Period.

Yes, the landscape has changed. We don’t shrink from the stench of gambling as we used to. Today, advertisements litter the air waves with chances to ‘legally’ bet on games. A decade or more of MLB competition saw the proliferation of PEDs either endorsed or winked at by the commissioner and owners of the MLB. Speculation is rampant that the biggest name in baseball today committed a cardinal sin in betting, even if his ‘interpreter’ was coerced to take the fall for it.

But Pete Rose was larger than all of this stuff. Those most passionate about the travesty of his exclusion from the Hall are really just as biased as those who support his exclusion. They have wanted Pete Rose inducted – and recognized as one of the greatest of players – because he was their childhood hero; because he embodied the spirit of competition and hustle that made them fall in love with the game in the first place.

photo from Dreamstime.com

I think he has been rightfully denied entry for the same reason. He knew what he represented and stood for during the tail end of his career. He was honored as a hero in his own lifetime. He reaped accolades, and earned endorsements for being a hero we could all relate to: Pete Rose wasn’t better because he was bigger, faster, stronger, or smarter than everyone else. Pete Rose was better because he did the things of which we are all capable.

He worked. He sweated. He barreled over catchers at the plate. He dove headfirst into bases. He ran to first base when he worked a base on balls, for crying out loud.

He never gave up or gave in –

On the field as a player –

Until he decided he was bigger than the game. 

Photo from Ebay.

So now, with Pete Rose passing on into the cornfields of immortality, it is time to set the statistical record straight.

Pete Rose should be a posthumous Hall of Famer. The Pete Rose exhibit should be somewhere near the front portico in Cooperstown, perhaps in a special recessed niche where he can crouch at the plate with Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, and some of the other candidates for greatest hitter in baseball history.

(But not Barry Bonds. Barry Bonds is another one who has sullied baseball’s good name, as have the rest of the PED crew. I’m not sure they should ever get in.)

Our heroes need not be perfect, but they do need to be less arrogantly and obnoxiously flawed. They need their sins and their mistakes to be unfortunate, not premeditated.

No, the World is Not Fair. Neither is induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Pete Rose has done his penance and his time. He has paid a hefty and a heavy price, and we can argue into the wee hours of the night, just as we once listened to West Coast ball games on small transistor radios, even after our parents told us to go to sleep.

By all measures except one, Pete Rose belongs in the annals of baseball, listed among the all-time greats. It’s a shame he wasn’t ready for the honor until now. His choice. Not ours.

A 1979 BASH alum, Philip Repko is a career educator who has worked in the classroom and in administration in public and private schools. He has been writing for fun and no profit since he was a teenager. Phil lives with his wife Julie in Gilbertsville and is the father of three outstanding children, two of whom are also poets and writers. He vacillates between poetry and prose, as the spirit beckons, and is currently working sporadically on a novella and a memoir.

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