Star 1980 Philadelphia Phillies 1st baseman Pete Rose was denied reinstatement to MLB today by commissioner Rob Manfred.
Before I get into the meat and potatoes of the issue, let me offer a mild apology to fans of the Cincinnati Reds. I know that Rose is yours. Everyone in Philly knows it. He spent five years with us. He spent 19 seasons in a Reds uniform. We acknowledge the facts, and respect them.
But you also need to acknowledge the influence that the man had on our organization as the key final piece in helping the Phillies to their first World Series crown in 1980, after 97 seasons of falling short. Now, back to addressing the issue of today’s announcement.
By not allowing Major League Baseball’s all-time hit king back into the game, Manfred let down many fans who hoped that his would somehow be a different, more human and fan-friendly, and less hypocritical administration than his immediate predecessors, especially the man who groomed him, Bud Selig.
For many years now, Selig and others, including Manfred, have sat in sanctimonious judgment over players and others in what has now grown into a $9 billion industry. While their job as Commissioner of Baseball does indeed come with an aspect of judgement, it is the hypocritical nature of their decisions that is worrisome.
In today’s official announcement, Manfred stated “my only concern has to be the protection of the integrity of play on the field through appropriate enforcement of the Major League Rules.”
The one rule that Manfred specifically cites is the one that Rose is admitted to violating, Rule 21, which involves a player or manager betting on a game in which he has a duty to perform.
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Cutting through the legalist mumbo-jumbo submitted by Manfred today, the bottom line is that the Commissioner feels that his role relevant to this issue is to protect the integrity of the game from players or managers who would bet on the game, especially games in which they have direct involvement.
Meanwhile, however, Manfred was integral in MLB’s partnering earlier this year with fantasy sports giant DraftKings. That service provides individuals with the chance to bet daily on the performances of specific players.
In trying to defend this relationship, Manfred stated the following during this year’s World Series, per Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News:
“There’s a huge difference between Rob Manfred, citizen, betting on whether Kansas City beats Toronto or whomever on the one hand, and Rob Manfred picking nine guys off 18 teams to try to see if he can accumulate more points within a given set of guidelines than a hundred guys trying to do the same thing.”
Actually, Mr. Commissioner, there is little difference between what you are officially sanctioning and what Mr. Rose has admitted to doing. Rose placed bets that his Cincinnati Reds team would win certain games. You are sanctioning the possibility that players can help people, possibly friends or family members, win large sums of money, either individually or in collusion with one another, through their performances.
To say that “I’m quite convinced it is a game of skill, as defined by the federal statute…I’m comfortable with the idea that it’s not gambling” is ridiculous on its face.
Now it’s not whether money exchanging hands based on player performances is ethical within both the spirit of Rule 21 and its actual stated intent, but whether what is happening meets a “federal statute” for a definition of the term “gambling“?
Mark Elliott correctly put it this way for Redleg Nation in late September: “In Draft Kings, I give them money, choose a group of players and based on how those players perform, Draft Kings gives me more money or keeps mine. But a gambler, like say Pete Rose, goes to a bookie or sports book, gives them money, chooses a team and based on how the group of players on that team perform, the gambler gets more money or loses his. Oh yeah, sure, I see it. There is a “skill” in choosing the group of players, and no “skill” in just picking a team.”
Here are the facts: Major League Baseball cut a deal with DraftKings because the baseball powers-that-be couldn’t handle people making money off their game when they were not receiving a piece of the action. Baseball wanted in on the massively lucrative fantasy baseball market. It was a money grab, pure and simple, “gambling” considerations be damned.
The problem is that in cutting that deal, Manfred and Major League Baseball tipped their hands: money talks, everything else walks. Baseball cannot have Rose or any other player or manager actually outright betting on the outcome of games, because if fans thought that was happening, the league would lose all credibility.
But baseball itself can profit from whether or not players get hits, strike batters out, steal bases, and more on any given night. And players themselves can help ensure that their friends and family members (the players themselves are banned from these fantasy leagues) can profit from their successes, and potentially their failures. To look at it any other way is simply naive.
Major League Baseball cannot have it both ways. If Rose was wrong to gamble on the outcome of games, then MLB is wrong to sanction and profit from the daily gambling, no matter what the United States government wants to technically call it, on fantasy baseball.
If it’s okay for MLB to sanction such activities, then how bad could Rose’s violation actually have been? Want to send a message to players and managers that outright gambling on games is frowned upon? Okay, I get that. So let the punishment fit the crime. Let there be justice. It is what we cry for here in America, correct?
You banished the man from the game forever, except on those ceremonial occasions when you found that you could make money off of his appearances over the years. Then you allowed him to participate, jacking up the attendance figures, the parking fees, the concession sales. If he was really such a black mark on the game, those appearances should never have been allowed.
Rose has been punished. He has spent more than a quarter century largely banished from any official involvement in a game that he loves, one that he gave decades of real blood, sweat, and effort to help grow. Yes, he accepted that punishment. He also assumed that he would be reinstated one day, even if that day was decades away.
You want to talk about federal statutes? Violating those laws and statutes gets you fines and/or prison time, banishment from society. Rapists, drug dealers, bank robbers, and those who commit domestic assault (including a number within Major League Baseball on that last one) serve their time, and return to society. Few serve 26 years of time, let alone a life sentence.
Rose was wrong. And when Manfred signed that contract with DraftKings, so was he wrong. Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens, and Barry Bonds were wrong to take PEDs. So was Selig in accepting not only the return of fan adulation for the league, but the return to the turnstiles, cash boxes, and TV/radio contracts that their obviously altered bodies helped make happen after the disastrous 1994 strike.
Major League Baseball has consistently been hypocritical any time money is concerned. Manfred’s actions today and earlier this year show that nothing has changed under his stewardship. The hypocrisy continues, while the MLB Club bank accounts grow.
Phil Mushnick at the New York Post reported in a late October piece in the wake of insider trading revelations at DraftKings and their competitors, FanDuel that the official MLB response was: “We are surprised .”
Mushnick went on to opine himself: “Thus, if we’re to believe that, MLB sold its name and game not knowing if its new business partner was a sucker-bet operation or if the winners and the payouts could be influenced by inside knowledge.”
He then went on to express a mock MLB position: “So bet, fans, bet! Bet every day, all day; every night, all night! Look, we’ve even supplied our official logos, certifications and blessings! So you know it must be on the level!“
Major League Baseball is now officially involved in the business of betting on its own game. The hypocrisy could not be more real. Let’s assume that everyone is wrong here. Rose. Baseball. Manfred.
Then shouldn’t a flawed 74-year old addict who has been banished for a quarter-century be allowed a limited reinstatement to the game, and shouldn’t MLB then flex its considerable behind-the-scenes and public relations muscle to exert pressure on the Baseball Hall of Fame on his behalf?
I believe that the answer to both of those questions is a resounding “Yes!” Pete Rose should be reinstated to baseball, with the provision that he not be allowed to hold a position in uniform or in the front office of an MLB organization. The Baseball Hall of Fame should, in any event, reverse its Rose-inspired rules changes regarding the Permanently Ineligible List, and elect one of the greatest players of all-time to his rightful place.
There is no argument about whether Rose bet on baseball. He did. He admitted it, decades ago. There is no argument that Rose has been punished. He has. Banned from the game for 26 years now. The question is, what now? The simple answer should be, as the sign being held by a fan in the picture accompanying this piece reads: “Let Him In.”