Hypocrisy Imperils the Future for Rose

In January--maybe even in December--Pete Rose will stroll from the jailhouse where he has been consigned for a memory flaw.

He forgot to pay his taxes, an oversight not recommended, but not uncommon.

Re-entering society, Pete will create a dilemma for (a) those in baseball asked to decide whether he should be given employment and (b) those voting for the Hall of Fame, pressed to determine whether one doing time, and suspended from the game, belongs in their shrine.

It is possible that one decision will be linked to the other, which is to say, unless Rose is readmitted to baseball, Hall of Fame voters might find him unfit for approval.

Pete has done a lot of things in life distressingly stupid, but he has been smart enough to keep a low profile during his incarceration.

He has reduced the profile, in fact, to non-existent, rejecting all publicity on the ground that news of him might enhance the status of those gathering it, but not of Pete.

Jail is an ugly experience. Rose wants out and obviously he wants to return to baseball, which he knows something about.

At anything else, he has to be a bust. He can’t build bridges. He can’t write poetry. He can’t sell. And in today’s competitive market, it isn’t likely he could make a go of saving souls.

Baseball’s piety in connection with the Rose case is the least bit repulsive. The game has been grandstanding, creating the impression that forgiveness of its wayward sons is a bigger deal than it is in other sports.

Ben Johnson is back on the track. And what sin greater than cheating in the Olympics, holiest of athletic endeavors?

Johnson cheated. He used substances banned by Olympic law. His victory was negated. He brought disgrace to his country.

But he is back in business, because punishment needn’t be forever.

Dexter Manley, a three-time drug loser, is back in football, forgiven with tons of others, in all sports, for drug violations.

Lester Piggott, England’s most successful jockey--the Bill Shoemaker of his land--is back at work. Lester served a year for income tax evasion, a god giving racing the blackest of eyes.

Muhammad Ali ducked the draft at a time America didn’t consider it good form. He not only was forgiven, but Louisville named a street after him.

And during his early and middle years in pro basketball, was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar saint-like? He went around punching guys. One night, he sneak-punched a player named Kent Benson, injuring him badly. In an off-season pickup game, he punched some nondescript, breaking the man’s jaw.

Yet, in the end, Abdul-Jabbar departed a conquering hero, if not a patriarch.

Need you be reminded that one Super Bowl Sunday, the wife of Darryl Strawberry told police her husband came home and broke her nose?

If this happened, as charged, how would baseball, so tenderly sensitive to the game’s image, compare wife-beating as a sin to betting?

And would those Hall of Fame voters, guarding the ramparts of baseball integrity, turn down a guy who bet and vote in one who busted up a wife?

Did George Steinbrenner, making a burlesque of baseball, not do more to damage the game than Pete Rose? And look how long George survived before getting the foot.

The mad course followed by Rose hardly is recommended here, but when the jailhouse doors open and he comes to baseball, which he served most of his life, asking for a job, we don’t see it as a major concession if he gets one.

We don’t even see the need for deep and profound soul-searching.

Ted Turner was forgiven for an act of lunacy that all but got him chased across the border.

Guest speaker at a breakfast of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Assn., Ted outlined his objection to player agent Jerry Kapstein. Then he added: “You should have some reason to dislike a guy besides the fact he wears a full-length fur coat and is a Jew.”

Mind you, here was a baseball owner, a basketball owner, a guy licensed by the government to televise.

He would apologize, gain forgiveness and grow from that point to the corporate giant he is today.

So, reflecting on the Rose case, you want to discourage finger-wagging. Too many who wag are vulnerable.