| Still Hustling |
12 January 2004
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Pete Rose Admits Lying about Baseball Bets
"On the diamond, no one ever wrung more success from less natural talent than [Pete] Rose did," George Will rightly noted last week. Pete Rose, known as "Charlie Hustle," holds the record for most hits in a baseball career. He is not in the Hall of Fame, however, because he is under a permanent ban for gambling on games in which he took part. Last week, he admitted that he has been lying for the last 14 years about his innocence. It is a pathetic attempt to regain a place in baseball, and it should be ignored by the commissioner's office and by the fans.
To the uninitiated, the lifetime ban for gambling seems excessive in a sport that lets drug addicts fall off the wagon time and again without more than a wrist-slap for their weakness. And one its prepared to entertain the idea that gambling is an addiction for which there should be treatment. As sins go, gambling is a pretty minor affair.
However, Mr. Rose came to the game decades after the 1919 World Series "Black Sox" scandal that almost destroyed the sport. Eight men on the Chicago White Sox accepted money to deliberately lose the series to New York for the benefit of gamblers. "Shoeless" Joe Jackson's name lives in infamy because of it, not in glory as his talents merit.
As a result, every baseball locker room has a sign in both English and Spanish on the wall spelling out Rule 21, which reads,
"Any player, umpire or club or league official or employee who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball games in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible."
Why are drugs treated less harshly than gambling? Pure and simple, drugs will destroy a man's career, his life and his family. Gambling has it in its power to destroy every career in baseball, every life in baseball and every family of everyone in baseball by destroying what Mr. Will calls professional baseball's competitive integrity. That is the very heart of the game.
Mr. Rose claims he never bet against his team, that he never used inside information to gain an unfair advantage, that he had never let his bet influence his baseball decisions as a player or manager. This could be the case (which would make him an idiot), even from a man who has admitted to a 14-year lie. However, it was never a secret that gambling was the third-rail of baseball, that a wager was death to one's career. Moreover, there is a great historical reason for it. He could have bet on cards, dice, horses, basketball, or presidential elections with impunity. Instead (or more accurately, in addition), he bet on baseball games in which he was participating. Leniency in this case would only create exceptions for the celebrity class, and America has too much of that as it is.
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