Here’s Hall of Fame Vote for Pete Rose--Despite His Betting

How the judge decides the Pete Rose issue is one thing. And how those who vote for baseball’s Hall of Fame decide it is another.

As one granted a Hall of Fame vote, we are going to cast it in favor of Pete, but it will be accompanied by no lobbying, no missionary work, no tender pleas for clemency.

Nor are we going to listen to sermonizing from any Holy Joes who vote, impressing us with the morality of their judgments against Pete.

What you have here, in other words, is a case that can be voted either way, depending upon your outlook, with no one having to add apologetic footnotes.

It states, in the Hall of Fame election rules, that “voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, contribution to his team, or teams.”

Certainly, Pete Rose qualifies for his playing record, his ability, his contribution to his teams and for his sportsmanship.

Over 24 years, Pete hit safely 4,256 times. He performed faithfully and hard. As an offering to his teams, he performed at four positions--first, second, third and outfield--even though the switches posed a problem for him.

And, on the field, Pete was a sportsman. His play rarely created an enemy.

Anyone who doesn’t agree to the foregoing should be making buttonholes, not voting for the Hall of Fame.

The debatable issues are those involving “integrity” and “character.”

Did the gambling by Rose, and his subsequent run-in with the government over taxes, offset his 24 years of dedication on the field?

Should Hall of Fame voters be guided by the ruling of the judge? If the judge puts Pete in jail, should the Hall of Fame vote automatically go against him?

If the judge decides on a fine and probation, does this call for leniency by Hall of Fame voters?

Is the judge’s decision irrelevant as far as Hall of Fame is concerned?

Judges, you must remember, do not rule uniformly. One will give a murderer three years. Another will give a preacher who robs parishioners 40 years.

Pete Rose is claiming, in effect, temporary insanity, ascribing his tax cheating to a gambling habit he couldn’t control.

You can arch an eyebrow at such a claim or, if you are familiar with gamblers, you can testify they are, indeed, crazy, foaming-at-the-mouth mad. In their frame of mind, they lie, forge, steal and do countless other things of an antisocial nature. Upstairs, they are out of it.

The Hall of Fame voter, like the judge, must decide whether he buys Pete’s story.

Technically, Joe Louis didn’t cheat on his income tax. All Joe did was spend money that belonged to the government.

Joe gambled heavily at golf. He lived high. He was bereft of fiscal responsibility, explaining to IRS he didn’t mean to blow his tax money, but it just vanished.

Joe was a sweet guy. It was impossible to dislike him. He owed the government so much that it would have been impossible, in his lifetime, to make good the debt.

IRS washed it, and Joe would be accepted by the populace as a hero and a respected citizen, and a stadium would be named for him in Detroit.

And, in boxing’s Hall of Fame, Joe Louis stands in the forefront.

Cassius Clay ducked the draft. At a time kids were going to Vietnam, he got a field commission as a Muslim minister, claiming exemption on the grounds of religion. He changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

Patriotic people in the country hated him. He walked the ledge of jail, barred from boxing.

But he, too, would emerge as a hero of sorts, one for whom streets, clubs and playgrounds are named. He strolls the world today as a figure immensely liked, a prominent member of boxing’s Hall of Fame.

We recall a headline one day in the Wall Street Journal. It read:

“George Steinbrenner, Hit by Nixon Scandal, Barely Misses a Stride.”

It would then be explained that George’s conviction for a felony didn’t, in any way, water down his social and business functions . . . that he had returned to the scene like a circus horse that smells the sawdust.

And George’s rap? He had given bonuses to employees, with instructions that they donate them to the Richard Nixon campaign fund.

Informed that this was highly illegal, George registered shock. He said he couldn’t picture such a law. Fined $15,000, he was told to try escaping the slammer.

But society would quickly accept him. Around the republic, he has been decorated countless times and he even has been named an officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee, one of our holiest bodies.

Others voting on the baseball Hall of Fame needn’t be influenced even remotely by our attitude on Pete Rose, but we see him as one who went out of his head on gambling, as guys have on booze and on drugs, and we don’t care, in this case, to finger-wag.

He isn’t presented here as an American god--just as one who served his profession as few others have. He never committed the ultimate sin--betting against his own team--and, irrespective of how he is judged in court, he is going to get at least one Hall of Fame vote.

Do you know why? When he says he was nuts, we believe it.