Pete Rose

There has been some discussion, as of late, between "the powers that be" of reinstating Pete Rose into baseball. The all-time hits leader and former manger received a lifetime ban years ago for betting on his team to win during his tenure in baseball. Because of the Black Sox scandal nearly 100 years ago and the resulting deliberate loss by Chicago players, baseball has been extremely tough on gambling on games.

You do it. You're gone. For good.

But people have been re-examining that policy. And I think that's a good idea. BETTING on the games in question really wasn't the problem a century ago. The problem was deliberately losing games so that they could throw the series. In other words, deliberately losing to make more money was the problem.

Gambling on your team to win is a lot different than gambling on your team to lose. And people are finally starting to see that. Yes, when it's the manager that's involved, he MAY hurt the team's long-term chances of having a good season by using his best pitchers too long (or too often) to increase his chances of winning INDIVIDUAL games, thus burning their arms out by using them incorrectly, but that's something you have to look at closely to see if that sort of thing was done.

Those looking at Pete Rose's games as manager never really saw that type of suspicious activity. Why? Because it's more than possible he bet on most, if not all of his teams games. He was so confident of his team that he thought they were going to win every single game. A person who bets like that is not going to wreck his team for one game at the expense of the next. That kind of betting would destroy his team AND cost him money. He bet on his team simply because he thought they would win all the time.

And more than anything, Pete Rose had the mentality, that winning was always the most important thing. Throwing a game or doing something that would cost HIS team the season would have been totally foreign to him.

AND managers have been notorious for misusing pitchers for decades. Back in 1969, the Twins manager, Billy Martin, hot in a pennant chase, used his ace Jim Kaat for nine plus innings of relief in an 18 inning game and then had him START 2 games later because they "needed the win" to make the playoffs. Kaat never recovered from that abuse, pitched horribly the rest of the season and didn't even get a start in the playoffs when the Orioles swept us in three straight. Yet, Martin didn't do that because he was betting on the team. He did it to win. Sometimes managers try too hard, the wrong way.

But back to Rose.

In the distant past, I said something like all players should be required to bet on their teams to win. It keeps them honest. And it assures a level of commitment that otherwise would be missing in the day to day nature of a long season. Let's face it, there is no monetary incentive to win in sports. Players get paid if they win, lose, or are hurt and don't play at all. They have no "skin in the game." People with money at stake play harder and stay more focused.

Pete Rose knew that. But it cost him what he loved most, because other people didn't understand that.

Reinstate him? Of course.

He never should have been gone.