Sure, Pete gambled on baseball, but the statstics do not lie. Ty Cobb is in the Hall because he was an incredible baseball player, not because he was a racist pig and an awful human being. It's called the Baseball Hall of Fame, not the Most Righteous Person Hall of Fame. Hollywood didn't take away Roman Polanski's Oscars because he was (is) a pedophile.
Here are my ten reasons.
1. Patty Smith in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
2. Yasar Arafat, an admitted International terrorist, won a Nobel Peace Prize.
3. Al Gore won an Academy Award for An Inconvenient Truth.
4. Milli Vanilli won a Grammy Award for "Best New Artist" in 1990. Also nominated: The Indigo Girls. I guess musicians who sing and write their own (incredible) songs are not worthy of honoring.
5. John Travolta had a #1 song with "You're The One That I Want" from the Grease soundtrack. Credence Clearwater Revival NEVER had a # 1 song.
6. Al Sharpton ran for U.S. President!
7. O.J. Simpson is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
8. Ted Kennedy is in the U. S. Senate, not in prison for murder.
9. Janet Napolitano, the current Secretary of Homeland Security, believes that crossing the American border illegally is not a crime.
10. Sean Hannity and Keith Olberman are taken seriously by more than 2 million people every day.
1 comment:
But these aren't reasons, they're other outrages. Life doesn't make a lot of sense, but keeping Pete Rose out of the Hall of Fame sure does.
Listen, he was allowed to bet on football, basketball, hockey, horses, racing, and everything else. He was allowed to bet on baseball-- that's right, allowed to bet on MLB games. *He was only not allowed to bet on MB games on which he could affect the outcome*.
Guess what Arrogant Pete did? You guessed it: he bet on the Reds. Think about the sheer stupidity of that for a second. Did he somehow forget this was against the rules? No, because it is posted on every major league and minor league clubhouse wall. Along with the penalty: lifetime ban.
So we have no evidence, right? No. We have betting slips in Pete's handwriting, listing him betting on Reds games. He didn't even use code to confuse any investigators. He just wrote out his bets and for how much on scraps of paper. He then gave these scraps to a known criminal.
Pete Rose is so colossally imperious that he didn't seem to care he would be caught. When confronted by the evidence, he accepted a lifetime ban but continued to deny that he had done anything wrong for close to two decades. He signed autographs for $45 a pop and cried crocodile tears to anyone who would listen, all within spitting distance of the Hall's doorstep. Years later, in a multimillion dollar book deal, he finally admitted the truth.
I say allow him into the Hall when he serves his lifetime ban. Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other Black Sox should be eligible, BTW, since they're dead. They deserve consideration. The fulfilled the conditions of the ban, and if their numbers warrant it they should be inducted.
The moment Pete Rose drops dead, he should be added to the ballot.
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