THE PETE ROSE DECISION : COMMENTARY : In This Case, Baseball Proved to Be Winner

Pete Rose lost the biggest game of his life Thursday. A. Bartlett Giamatti was not the winner, however. It was baseball’s office of the commissioner and, therefore, baseball itself, which emerged triumphant.

Rose, battling to maintain the only life he knows, challenged the authority of Giamatti to sit in final judgment concerning gambling allegations against him. Rose finally capitulated Thursday when he accepted, without further legal protest, a lifetime ban from the game.

That Giamatti was able to administer that sad, but necessary, penalty was in large part due to the courts’ backing of his right to do so and Rose’s concession of that point. Thus, Giamatti said Thursday, “the commissionership is made stronger, not in the scope of its powers, but in the solidity of its structure.”

It is the only result to emerge from the months of slow torture of the game, the only thing worth acknowledging as good and whole.

Rose’s career is in tatters.

Giamatti has ahead of him months, perhaps years, in which he’ll bear the brunt of the emotional backwash emitted by Rose’s most faithful followers.

But the system worked.

The right of the commissioner’s office to do its duty was not always guaranteed, not after Rose, through the sheer force of his personality, seemed to rally most of baseball to his side this spring. Giamatti and his office were viewed as despotic tyrants bent on ruining a great player’s career, siding with the dregs of the gambling world, even in court depositions, against Charlie Hustle, Mr. Baseball.

Then Rose decided to throw a legal block rather than a legal defense by taking Giamatti, and the game, to court. That move, as well as Rose’s arrogance and absolute refusal to show remorse, shored up Giamatti’s image. But even if Rose hadn’t inflicted grievous wounds, Giamatti would not have balked at pursuit because he believed in the rightness of that pursuit.

“The integrity of the game cannot be defended except by a process that itself embodies integrity and fairness,” Giamatti said.

Giamatti would not concede one iota of his office’s power. Only a court could take it away.

Surprisingly, Rose found one judge willing, securing a temporary restraining order in June prohibiting Giamatti from calling a hearing to pursue the matter. Not surprisingly, that decision, Rose’s first -- and last -- major courtroom victory, took place in Cincinnati, the city where Rose is Mr. Baseball, where Rose built the bulk of his Hall of Fame credentials. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Norbert Nadel even determined that Giamatti had unfairly prejudged Rose.

Rose had used up his home-field advantage. But he was destined to lose that advantage, as soon as Giamatti’s appeal to federal courts was accepted and forwarded to Judge John Holschuh in Columbus, Ohio.

Giamatti was almost certain to find relief there, just as many other commissioners have. Rose had to know that, seeing as how that venue and most other courts -- outside of Nadel’s -- historically have taken a laissez-faire approach to the game, leaving it to baseball it solve its most pressing problems.

The game has.

Commissioner Happy Chandler, not the courts, banned Leo Durocher for a year for consorting with gamblers. Chandler, not the courts, held the threat of banishment over players who plotted a boycott of games in which Jackie Robinson appeared, thus assuring the success of integration.

Commissioner Bowie Kuhn interceded, ending Charlie Finley’s attempted fire-sale dismantling of the Oakland Athletics. Kuhn’s right to do so was upheld by the courts after Finley sued unsuccessfully.

Commissioner Peter Ueberroth fined several players who were found to be involved in the Pittsburgh drug scandal, even though no players were ever officially charged. No player sued Ueberroth or challenged his authority. Nor did Steve Howe, suspended from the game for repeated drug offenses.

And Giamatti suspended Rose, in accordance with anti-gambling rules set down by Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first commissioner, who was hired shortly after the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

Those rules have been posted on the bulletin boards of every clubhouse Rose has ever entered as a professional ballplayer and manager. Those rules are the ones Giamatti and every commissioner before him are bound to enforce. Rose undoubtedly saw the inevitability, figured the next judge would let the commissioner continue to do his duty. His resistance worn down, his will to fight finally snuffed out, Rose quit the fight.

“I was just tired of it,” a grim, red-eyed Rose said Thursday.

He did not say he was guilty of gambling. He did not say he was innocent. What he did say was that he accepted Giamatti’s ruling and, therefore, the commissioner’s right to rule.

It was not nearly as solemn or momentous an occasion as watching the fall of Richard Nixon. Nor did the denouement bring quite the same wondrous reaction as did the sight of members of the U.S. House of Representatives actually playing out their roles as spelled out by the House rules of impeachment. But the message was the same.

“The matter of Mr. Rose is now closed,” Giamatti said. “It will be debated and discussed. Let no one think that it did not hurt baseball. That hurt will pass, however, as the great glory of the game asserts itself and a resilient institution goes forward. ... Let it also be clear that no individual is superior to the game.”

Rules are meant to be followed. By both sides. Baseball’s commissioner was allowed to and therefore did his duty, even if Pete Rose did not.