It looks like Pete Rose has found the best way he can get into the Hall of Fame: shake your head while talking about the steroid guys because it makes your crime seem less reprehensible.
I saw a picture posted on Facebook, from a page that is demanding Rose be put into the Hall of Fame. It's a signed baseball by Rose, wherein he writes the number of hits he got playing baseball (4256) and the number of steroids he took (0). I've heard his name come up a buncha times in connection with the finally-announced suspensions by Baseball in the Biogenesis investigations, including a ban of 214 games for Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez aka A-Rod aka A-Roid. ESPN's Colin Cowherd certainly thinks it's silly that A-Rod is playing baseball tonight while Rose can't get a phone call from anyone about getting reinstated.
This is a very old trick. Readjust the standards of justice to fit your argument. See -- these guys are bigtime cheaters breaking sacred records and they're still getting to play! You got regular users in the NFL and nobody gives a shit! (You also have guys who have killed people driving drunk, and one guy at least who killed dogs, playing in the NFL.) How can we compare their sins to mine? Outrageous!!!!
Sorry, Pete. Let's keep the issues separate, and keep your story simple.
Since the Black Sox scandal of 1919, the most prominent offense in baseball has concerned gambling, so much so that every clubhouse has it right there: DO NOT BET ON BASEBALL. It is the only "death penalty" on the books in the sport for a first offense. Baseball was so shamed by the scandal that it vowed never to ever let it happen again. And every person associated with Major League Baseball knows it: you bet on baseball, you're toast.
Pete Rose bet on baseball.
Not only that: he denied that he did for years. He accepted the lifetime ban as part of an agreement that baseball would not officially release a formal finding based on the infamous Dowd Report (which had documented seven volumes' worth of evidence that Rose bet on the sport). He insisted that he never bet on baseball, even as he admitted to having a gambling problem, even as he admitted he bet on other sporting events (complaining along the way that what he did was legal in Nevada but not in Ohio), even as he had to deal with tax evasion troubles. Then finally fifteen years after the Dowd Report, he admits he bet on his team (to win, not to lose; the Dowd Report never found evidence he bet against his club).
It doesn't get any more complicated than that. Like A-Rod and a lot of other steroid-ers, Pete Rose deludes himself into thinking that what he did was no big deal, that "they" are out to "get" him, and that he's special and deserves to be considered as such anyway. But let me stop comparing the juicers to Rose, because it should make no difference what penalties are applied to these cretins on the Biogenesis list (especially the fraud named Braun) in relation to the cretin who bet on the sport and denied it. You bet on baseball, you're done.
Is steroid use a real problem? Hell yes. I'm all for really stiff penalties. First offense, either 100 games or 50 and a lifetime ban from the Hall of Fame. Second office, you're gone. Out of the game forever. Part of the reason why these guys have hung around is because the waters were murky and no one wanted to change how things were going after Baseball's great return with the McGwire/Sosa home run chase. So steroid users weren't caught, and weren't sent into total exile. The situation is clearer now, and we will see some juicers booted permanently. But the failures of one set of rules should not be used as a justification of loosening up the rules on a separate situation.
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