I'm not the least bit sympathetic to Pete Rose for his continuing ban from baseball, are you? The guy is an inveterate liar and a bit of a dope. He's frittered away numerous kotowing opportunities to the lords of the game that could have polished his reformation credentials.
Besides that, what do I care if he's allowed to serve as a hitting instructor or a first base coach? That's really a Pete Rose problem.
Here's what I do care about: I care about a baseball Hall of Fame that doesn't include the all-time hits leader. That's a bit of a travesty.
Here are some more bits: the Hall of Fame apparently will close its doors to the all-time home run king and the best pitcher of his generation. We appear to be destined to a Hall absent one of MLB's greatest infielders, who has not yet retired. For years the Hall has turned a blind eye to one of the best players of the early 20th century.
Instead we have Phil Rizzuto and Lloyd Waner.
Having lived down the road from the Hall for 18 years; having made a tradition of annual Hejiras to Cooperstown every Opening Day, where we would hop the fence at Doubleday Field and throw a ball around (it snowed on us once); I want the museum to mean something. I want enshrinement of the game's best, not its nicest or most moral.
MLB can screw Pete Rose, but I wish it would quit screwing you and me, and this year, new commissioner Rob Manfred made it clear that he is not interested in that responsibility. He announced -- I read it as a suggestion -- that the Hall of Fame could make its own decisions about Rose independent of his decision to maintain the ban.
So here's your chance, proprietors of the realm: disconnect Hall votes from MLB policy and let the voters decide whether Rose and his clay feet belong next to a string of vicious racists (Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker and Kennesaw Mountain Landis, to name three), proven cheaters (Gaylord Perry) and serial adulterers (most notably Wade Boggs).
And voters, don't forget that it's not just about Pete Rose (or Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens, or Alex Rodriguez someday.) Electing them to the Hall of Fame isn't just an honor for them. It's about honoring the baseball fans who remember how Rose stole our hearts with his unprecedented hustle, how Clemens mowed down professional hitters, how ARod played the greatest shortstop we'd ever seen and how Bonds dominated the game like no one who ever played.
Showing posts with label Pete Rose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pete Rose. Show all posts
23 December 2015
23 June 2015
Pete Rose Colored Glasses
There has been a lot of good, smart discussion about Pete Rose since the most recent revelation that he bet on baseball while a player, and therefore, has never stopped lying. If the door was ever cracked to Rose's return to Baseball, that loud shudder you heard yesterday was the room shaking in the shadow of a slam.
For those still clinging to sympathy for the hit king, the argument against is tough to oppose. Rose is now in league with those inveterate liars -- Lance Armstrong, Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, Bill Clinton, et. al. -- who treated the truth as a strategy to be employed only when effective. MLB did then and does now exhort players endlessly about its absolute prohibition -- and the consequences if violated -- against gambling of any kind.
So therefore, goes the argument, Pete Rose, a 17-time All Star, .303 lifetime hitter, three-time batting champ, 15-time MVP candidate, and contributor of 79 lifetime WAR, that guy should be banned from the game and hence from the Hall of Fame. Smarmy creep. Lying bastard. And all that.
It's a convincing argument. Screw Pete Rose.
But how about me? How about you?
We want Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame because we want the Hall to mean something about baseball. We grew up with a Hall of Fame that welcomed Ty Cobb's virulent racism and Tris Speaker's KKK membership and Babe Ruth's serial infidelity and Mickey Mantle's raging alcoholism and Joe DiMaggio's mob ties and Gaylord Perry's career-long cheating and on and on. Now we're being asked to accept the exclusion of all-time great players like Rose, Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Alex Rodriguez and perhaps others.
It doesn't make sense. It's not just that he Hall shouldn't exclude those wanting in character; it's that it hasn't.
I say screw Pete Rose too. And Bonds, Clemens and the rest of them. But induct them into the Hall of Fame because it's not their Hall of Fame; it's mine. And I want the best players enshrined in Cooperstown.
For those still clinging to sympathy for the hit king, the argument against is tough to oppose. Rose is now in league with those inveterate liars -- Lance Armstrong, Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Braun, Bill Clinton, et. al. -- who treated the truth as a strategy to be employed only when effective. MLB did then and does now exhort players endlessly about its absolute prohibition -- and the consequences if violated -- against gambling of any kind.
So therefore, goes the argument, Pete Rose, a 17-time All Star, .303 lifetime hitter, three-time batting champ, 15-time MVP candidate, and contributor of 79 lifetime WAR, that guy should be banned from the game and hence from the Hall of Fame. Smarmy creep. Lying bastard. And all that.
It's a convincing argument. Screw Pete Rose.
But how about me? How about you?
We want Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame because we want the Hall to mean something about baseball. We grew up with a Hall of Fame that welcomed Ty Cobb's virulent racism and Tris Speaker's KKK membership and Babe Ruth's serial infidelity and Mickey Mantle's raging alcoholism and Joe DiMaggio's mob ties and Gaylord Perry's career-long cheating and on and on. Now we're being asked to accept the exclusion of all-time great players like Rose, Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Alex Rodriguez and perhaps others.
It doesn't make sense. It's not just that he Hall shouldn't exclude those wanting in character; it's that it hasn't.
I say screw Pete Rose too. And Bonds, Clemens and the rest of them. But induct them into the Hall of Fame because it's not their Hall of Fame; it's mine. And I want the best players enshrined in Cooperstown.
16 August 2014
Dear Rob Manfred
Dear Rob,
Congratulations on your ascension to Commissioner. Always nice to see a Cornell guy from my year make good.
Here are your top priorities:
1. Speed up the game so women and children can identify with it.
2. Maintain your focus on labor peace and competitive balance.
3. Keep your eyes on the future while remembering the power of tradition.
4. Act as if baseball is in the entertainment business.
Specifically, to speed up the game and make it more interesting:
1. Enforce the 20-second rule between pitches with no one on base. That will eliminate all the apparel repositioning that sandbags the action and does nothing to build drama.
2. Instruct umpires not to allow batters to exit the batter's box unless they're hurt. That means pitchers can work fast and batters can't stop them.
3. Pass a rule that bans the replacement of a pitcher in his first inning of work unless he has allowed a run. Mid-inning pitching changes suck the life out of the game in the late innings, just as it should be getting exciting.
4. Speed up instant replay. It's saved time by eliminating most arguments. Its execution, though imperfect, has exceeded expectation. Keep tweaking it so that reviews don't take three minutes.
Then:
Congratulations on your ascension to Commissioner. Always nice to see a Cornell guy from my year make good.
Here are your top priorities:
1. Speed up the game so women and children can identify with it.
2. Maintain your focus on labor peace and competitive balance.
3. Keep your eyes on the future while remembering the power of tradition.
4. Act as if baseball is in the entertainment business.
Specifically, to speed up the game and make it more interesting:
1. Enforce the 20-second rule between pitches with no one on base. That will eliminate all the apparel repositioning that sandbags the action and does nothing to build drama.
2. Instruct umpires not to allow batters to exit the batter's box unless they're hurt. That means pitchers can work fast and batters can't stop them.
3. Pass a rule that bans the replacement of a pitcher in his first inning of work unless he has allowed a run. Mid-inning pitching changes suck the life out of the game in the late innings, just as it should be getting exciting.
4. Speed up instant replay. It's saved time by eliminating most arguments. Its execution, though imperfect, has exceeded expectation. Keep tweaking it so that reviews don't take three minutes.
Then:
- Continue to expand alternative media so that young fans can plug in on any device and revenues can be distributed equally.
- Find a way for the A's to move into the Valley. No other franchise has been held hostage to a dying city like they have.
- Hitch your wagon to Mike Trout, Clayton Kershaw, Giancarlo Stanton and Andrew McCutcheon. The four best players -- or at least young players -- in the game are Americans, and they're all humble, mature, articulate and charismatic. Throw in Yasiel Puig, Bryce Harper and King Felix. Sell them! People will buy.
- Alter the schedule so early April games are played in warm weather cities and inside domes.
- Get some doubleheaders into the schedule and move up the playoffs to prevent the abomination of flurries and freezing rain on World Series games.
- Pardon Pete Rose. It's time. He's paid his debt. While you're at it, pardon Joe Jackson too.
16 February 2014
Obsessed With Obsession
About nearly every great man two things can be said: he achieved great things in his life and he barely participated in the raising of his children.
About many great athletes, hagiographic observers have cooed, "he's the first to practice and the last to leave." A variation on this notes how the day after he won or lost the championship he could be found on the playing surface practicing a part of his game repeatedly.
We have an obsession with obsession, particularly at the highest level of sports. "He lives, eats and breathes (his sport)" is considered a compliment of the highest order. Pete Rose bragged that he'd never read a book cover-to-cover, and we admired how he had one of his best seasons the year his marriage dissolved.
What we fail to realize is that our sports heroes (and indeed, many of our business pioneers) tend to be one-dimensional demigods whose entire lives revolve around winning championships on the field but not on the homefront. That's another way of saying the home front revolves around them and their narcissistic endeavors.
Conversely, the way to dismiss a professional athlete is to say he doesn't love his game. He doesn't burn to win. Those tend to be the most interesting athletes, at least as human beings; they're the ones who have other interests besides competing every minute of every day to be the best at one thing.
I'm not the first person to arrive at my workplace in the morning or the last to leave, and I like it that way. I have a second job that feeds another part of my soul. I have an active social life and I volunteer like crazy, every Saturday for one organization. I read books. You might have noticed that I write a blog. If I haven't spent any quality time with my wife in a few days, I try to get directly home after work so that she's more than a roommate, or a planet orbiting my life.
Maybe I have an obsession with balance, with a multifaceted life, with a world of ideas in varied realms. Maybe that point of view is for those who lack ambition, people who will never invent the iPad, hit .300 lifetime or build Facebook. We also won't leave the nation littered with kids who never really knew their dads because they were singularly focused on winning.
When Michael Jordan left basketball, universally heralded as the greatest of all time, he had the opportunity to live the cliche of spending more time with his family in Chicago. But that transition would have come with a price. "The Greatest" would have to trade in his mantle for merely "dad." The world that revolved around him would have to reorient itself around his children and their mother. Freedom would have to give way to awesome responsiblity.
Instead he fled to the front office in Washington, D.C., and predictably his wife divorced him. He may be the best basketball player who ever lived, but it feels like he could have used some balance in his life. Keep that in mind the next time you consider a person who gave everything they had to a single endeavor.
About many great athletes, hagiographic observers have cooed, "he's the first to practice and the last to leave." A variation on this notes how the day after he won or lost the championship he could be found on the playing surface practicing a part of his game repeatedly.
We have an obsession with obsession, particularly at the highest level of sports. "He lives, eats and breathes (his sport)" is considered a compliment of the highest order. Pete Rose bragged that he'd never read a book cover-to-cover, and we admired how he had one of his best seasons the year his marriage dissolved.
What we fail to realize is that our sports heroes (and indeed, many of our business pioneers) tend to be one-dimensional demigods whose entire lives revolve around winning championships on the field but not on the homefront. That's another way of saying the home front revolves around them and their narcissistic endeavors.
Conversely, the way to dismiss a professional athlete is to say he doesn't love his game. He doesn't burn to win. Those tend to be the most interesting athletes, at least as human beings; they're the ones who have other interests besides competing every minute of every day to be the best at one thing.
I'm not the first person to arrive at my workplace in the morning or the last to leave, and I like it that way. I have a second job that feeds another part of my soul. I have an active social life and I volunteer like crazy, every Saturday for one organization. I read books. You might have noticed that I write a blog. If I haven't spent any quality time with my wife in a few days, I try to get directly home after work so that she's more than a roommate, or a planet orbiting my life.
Maybe I have an obsession with balance, with a multifaceted life, with a world of ideas in varied realms. Maybe that point of view is for those who lack ambition, people who will never invent the iPad, hit .300 lifetime or build Facebook. We also won't leave the nation littered with kids who never really knew their dads because they were singularly focused on winning.
When Michael Jordan left basketball, universally heralded as the greatest of all time, he had the opportunity to live the cliche of spending more time with his family in Chicago. But that transition would have come with a price. "The Greatest" would have to trade in his mantle for merely "dad." The world that revolved around him would have to reorient itself around his children and their mother. Freedom would have to give way to awesome responsiblity.
Instead he fled to the front office in Washington, D.C., and predictably his wife divorced him. He may be the best basketball player who ever lived, but it feels like he could have used some balance in his life. Keep that in mind the next time you consider a person who gave everything they had to a single endeavor.
30 November 2013
Stuffed Turkey of a Hall of Fame Ballot
The Hall of Fame ballot for 2014 has been released, in much the way hounds are released in a wild goose hunt, with 17 legitimate candidates on the list. With only 10 lines on the ballot, voters are going to be doing some triage.
Players on the ballot fall into five categories. The easy two are those who have earned shoo-in status to the Hall and those who merely played with guys who earned shoo-in status. (That's not to say that anyone actually is a shoo-ins; there's no accounting for taste and the ignorance of baseball writers.) We'll call them the "Lou Gehrig" division and the "Chico Ruiz" division. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Mike Mussina, Kurt Schilling, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, Frank Thomas, Tim Raines and Craig Biggio comprise the former group, about which no further discussion is really necessary. They're Famers.
Names such as Armando Benitez, J.T. Snow, Eric Gagne, Mike Timlin, Jacque Jones and Richie Sexson populate the list of merely good Major Leaguers. They will have to console themselves with fame, fortune and a boatload of frequent flyer miles.
Next we have the "Pete Rose" division: players whose membership in the Gehrig clan has been revoked because of drug use. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire could almost create their own wing in Cooperstown along with Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson. I would vote for all of these except Palmeiro, who failed a drug test. The rest were so unquestionably spectacular that our suspicions (not to mention a fair bit of evidence) might be overwhelmed the heft of their greatness. It's understandable that voters would exclude all or some of these, though it's not clear what the point of a Hall of Fame without Bonds and Clemens would be.
Then there's the "Sammy Sosa" division, whose members are: Sammy Sosa. Sosa probably took steroids, definitely corked his back and not withstanding all that might be a Hall of Famer. Mix up that witches' brew and there probably won't be much support for his candidacy.
The most taxing decisions concern those players whose numbers don't reflect how we felt about them. This is the "Bobby Grich" division. The advanced stats testify that Alan Trammel was a great-fielding shortstop with a highly respectable .285/.352/.415 slash line, 1200+ runs scored and an MVP season, worth 64 wins against replacement over a 20-year career. Certainly he was a good hitter for a shortstop but most of his career value grades out on the field, about which it's very hard not to be dubious.
Larry Walker hit .313/.400/.525 with 383 home runs and 1311 RBI. He also won Gold Gloves, though the number crunchers can't find any justification for them. On paper, that's a walk-through, but in Coors, there are a lot of questions. In Montreal, Walker was Clark Kent, climbing the corporate ladder slowly but surely with smart reporting and solid management skills. In the thin air of Denver, Walker became Superman, saving the world with his super-strength, flying cape and x-ray vision. In the six years between 1997 and 2002, he posted five amazing seasons, averaging .351/.439/.639. He's credited with 69 wins against replacement, which ordinarily is enough to buy real estate in Cooperstown. It's just that Coors turned Andres Galarraga and Dante Bichette into stars.
By any second-base standards, Jeff Kent was a great hitter. He also wasn't a second baseman. But by first base standards, he was just another guy, posting a .290/.356/.500 line and smacking 377 home runs, including a string of 11 years with 20+ home runs. He knew that his only ticket to the Hall was remaining at the keystone even if his defense was handcuffing his teams. So Kent finished with 57 wins against replacement and a strong argument for inclusion. He makes my ballot with reservations.
On the flip side, Don Mattingly was an awesome hitter until his back began biting into his power. He finished with numbers insufficient for a first baseman to win election, tallying just 41 wins against replacement. Fred McGriff's 493 homers, .377 on base percentage and cool nickname should be enough to vault him to baseball immortality. He smacked 30+ big flies 10 different times. He also DH'd, did nothing on the bases and changed teams six times. The seamheads peg him at 57 wins against replacement, and that might have felt like enough if he'd played most of his career for one or two teams.
So here's my ballot, ignoring the 10-candidate limit, in roughly the order of their greatness:
Barry Bonds
Greg Maddux
Roger Clemens
Mike Piazza
Tim Raines
Frank Thomas
Mike Mussina
Curt Schilling
Tom Glavine
Jeff Bagwell
Craig Biggio
Jeff Kent*
Alan Trammel**
Fred McGriff**
Larry Walker**
Jack Morris***
*probably
**not now but I could be persuaded
***shut up
Players on the ballot fall into five categories. The easy two are those who have earned shoo-in status to the Hall and those who merely played with guys who earned shoo-in status. (That's not to say that anyone actually is a shoo-ins; there's no accounting for taste and the ignorance of baseball writers.) We'll call them the "Lou Gehrig" division and the "Chico Ruiz" division. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Mike Mussina, Kurt Schilling, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, Frank Thomas, Tim Raines and Craig Biggio comprise the former group, about which no further discussion is really necessary. They're Famers.
Names such as Armando Benitez, J.T. Snow, Eric Gagne, Mike Timlin, Jacque Jones and Richie Sexson populate the list of merely good Major Leaguers. They will have to console themselves with fame, fortune and a boatload of frequent flyer miles.
Next we have the "Pete Rose" division: players whose membership in the Gehrig clan has been revoked because of drug use. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire could almost create their own wing in Cooperstown along with Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson. I would vote for all of these except Palmeiro, who failed a drug test. The rest were so unquestionably spectacular that our suspicions (not to mention a fair bit of evidence) might be overwhelmed the heft of their greatness. It's understandable that voters would exclude all or some of these, though it's not clear what the point of a Hall of Fame without Bonds and Clemens would be.
Then there's the "Sammy Sosa" division, whose members are: Sammy Sosa. Sosa probably took steroids, definitely corked his back and not withstanding all that might be a Hall of Famer. Mix up that witches' brew and there probably won't be much support for his candidacy.
The most taxing decisions concern those players whose numbers don't reflect how we felt about them. This is the "Bobby Grich" division. The advanced stats testify that Alan Trammel was a great-fielding shortstop with a highly respectable .285/.352/.415 slash line, 1200+ runs scored and an MVP season, worth 64 wins against replacement over a 20-year career. Certainly he was a good hitter for a shortstop but most of his career value grades out on the field, about which it's very hard not to be dubious.
Larry Walker hit .313/.400/.525 with 383 home runs and 1311 RBI. He also won Gold Gloves, though the number crunchers can't find any justification for them. On paper, that's a walk-through, but in Coors, there are a lot of questions. In Montreal, Walker was Clark Kent, climbing the corporate ladder slowly but surely with smart reporting and solid management skills. In the thin air of Denver, Walker became Superman, saving the world with his super-strength, flying cape and x-ray vision. In the six years between 1997 and 2002, he posted five amazing seasons, averaging .351/.439/.639. He's credited with 69 wins against replacement, which ordinarily is enough to buy real estate in Cooperstown. It's just that Coors turned Andres Galarraga and Dante Bichette into stars.
By any second-base standards, Jeff Kent was a great hitter. He also wasn't a second baseman. But by first base standards, he was just another guy, posting a .290/.356/.500 line and smacking 377 home runs, including a string of 11 years with 20+ home runs. He knew that his only ticket to the Hall was remaining at the keystone even if his defense was handcuffing his teams. So Kent finished with 57 wins against replacement and a strong argument for inclusion. He makes my ballot with reservations.
On the flip side, Don Mattingly was an awesome hitter until his back began biting into his power. He finished with numbers insufficient for a first baseman to win election, tallying just 41 wins against replacement. Fred McGriff's 493 homers, .377 on base percentage and cool nickname should be enough to vault him to baseball immortality. He smacked 30+ big flies 10 different times. He also DH'd, did nothing on the bases and changed teams six times. The seamheads peg him at 57 wins against replacement, and that might have felt like enough if he'd played most of his career for one or two teams.
So here's my ballot, ignoring the 10-candidate limit, in roughly the order of their greatness:
Barry Bonds
Greg Maddux
Roger Clemens
Mike Piazza
Tim Raines
Frank Thomas
Mike Mussina
Curt Schilling
Tom Glavine
Jeff Bagwell
Craig Biggio
Jeff Kent*
Alan Trammel**
Fred McGriff**
Larry Walker**
Jack Morris***
*probably
**not now but I could be persuaded
***shut up
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