There’s Barely Room for Sports in Sports Sections These Days

An item in the newspaper the other day told of a judge giving a last-minute reprieve from execution to a convicted murderer. The man had brutally butchered a family of seven.

I don’t particularly care whether Pete Rose is guilty. Nor whether Judge Norbert Nadel’s two-week reprieve was a “hometown” decision.

For more than two decades many in baseball have believed that Pete Rose has the body of a man and the responses of a small boy. By most accounts Rose is today’s incarnation of Ty Cobb.

Perhaps a stupid decision by a hometown judge has extended the life of this bloodied and battered child of a man. Two weeks. Pete Rose should shoot his lawyers for aiding and abetting his own massacre. And the press has pounced on this two weeks more than their response to the convicted murderer of seven.

BUD GREENSPAN

New York