Quit posturing. Quit pontificating. Quit fornicating around, you self-righteous dunderheads. Put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame as soon as possible. Put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame today. Put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame retroactively and claim you had him there all along. Where else are you turkeys who run baseball, as well as you who vote on such matters, going to put a guy who has 4,256 hits? How many other people on the planet have ever had that many? How many hits do you have? Get real. Get off your asses. Hustle to publicly admit you ain\u2019t no Charlie Hustle.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t bother making your millionth pious statement that Rose can\u2019t be in the sacrosanct Hall of Fame because he bet on baseball while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds. That\u2019s irrelevant. When he was a player he (evidently) didn\u2019t bet on baseball. That\u2019s it. He retired as a player, and it is as a player that he must be honored. What he did later should not be an issue. If Rose had stayed out of baseball and five years later inevitably been a landslide winner on the first ballot into the Hall of Fame, then subsequently robbed a bank, would he be removed from the Hall? Probably not.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t make an easy issue painful. There\u2019ll be plenty of discomfort for everyone when you have to tell Rose, who continues to agonize and yearn on the fringes of baseball, that under no circumstances will he ever be permitted to manage again in the major leagues. That\u2019s a different and far more serious issue. A man obsessed with gambling, a clinically ill ex-manager with a self-destructive urge to wager on his sport, cannot be trusted in that position again. That would be like putting an alcoholic in charge of the bar. And the alcoholic analogy is absolutely appropriate, especially since Rose has often proudly proclaimed he isn\u2019t an alcoholic or drug addict. That\u2019s right. He\u2019s a gambling addict, a compulsive and out of control placer of bets who doesn\u2019t come close to understanding that his insistence on continuing to wager on horse racing is like an alcoholic whiskey drinker saying everything\u2019s okay now because he only drinks beer. It\u2019s really quite sad. This master of hitting and athletic discipline, this legend for all time, is so lacking in insight that he\u2019s squandering his only long shot \u2013 oh, that gambling parlance \u2013 to someday return to baseball in some limited capacity, perhaps as a spring training batting instructor. He\u2019d rather bet on ponies.<\/p>\n
Pete Rose, if you were in a batting slump right now, you\u2019d examine your swing, you\u2019d take more batting practice, you\u2019d study the pitchers more closely.\u00a0 You\u2019d aggressively go after what you want and need.\u00a0 This game isn\u2019t so different.\u00a0 You need to examine your swing in a psychologist\u2019s office.\u00a0 You should hit some balls at Gamblers Anonymous meetings.\u00a0 You should study the characteristics of the ailment that\u2019s throwing balls at you and that you can\u2019t hit.\u00a0 Learn about the one opponent you haven\u2019t been able to beat.<\/p>\n
And if you do that, then people will allow themselves to accept your thus far unconvincing assertions of sorrow and regret.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Quit posturing. Quit pontificating. Quit fornicating around, you self-righteous dunderheads. Put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame as soon as possible. Put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame today. Put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame retroactively and claim you had him there all along. Where else are you turkeys who run…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,78,77],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n