Sunday, October 03, 1999
What's good for century is good for Hall
BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Let's say Pete Rose has made baseball's all-century team. (He has.) Let's suppose the Reds get to the World Series. (They could.) Let's say Game 2 of the Series, when the century team will be honored on the field, is in Cincinnati. (It would be).
“So which would be better?” I asked Rose Friday. “To be on the field with you when your name is announced? Or to be sitting next to Bud Selig?”
Selig would be in Cincinnati as Rose's name was called and the crowd lost its mind. You couldn't lift that irony with a 20-ton crane.
“That's a helluva question,” Rose said.
“I wouldn't know who you were. I'd be on cloud nine. I won't walk on the field,” Rose said. “I'll just glide.” And Selig?
“It'd probably be a sleepless night for him,” Rose said.
He breezed into town Friday, the way he always does, in and out, here and gone. His friend Arnie Metz said Rose isn't crazy about coming home, if only because he's here a lot when he's a conversation topic in the media. The conversation isn't always kind.
Rose dropped the ceremonial first puck at the Ducks' opener Saturday night. “When's puck-off?” he asked Friday, echoing the words of his first wife, Karolyn, before a Stingers game some 20 years ago.
Halfway to Elba
What will baseball do about Pete Rose? Baseball has to do something. Because what it's doing right now — letting Rose twist in the wind — isn't fair.
Rose was not invited to the All-Star celebration that featured the greatest living ballplayers. Now that he has been voted one of the century's best, he will be introduced at the Series. So what gives? What is the standard?
Why is Rose accepted at one festivity and not the other? Aren't they both major-league functions?
Could it be that the all-century voting is sponsored by a huge credit card company, which is also a huge sponsor of baseball?
Could that mean the grand old game has, um, selective scruples, affected by the wind, the moon, the tides and, I don't know, tall piles of advertising cash?
We'd hate to think that the keepers of baseball virginity, those who would deem Rose unfit for their Hall of Fame, could be swayed by a little swag. So let's be charitable. Let's suppose, on this fine Sabbath morning, that baseball is softening its hard line against The Hit King.
No telling. A call to Selig was not returned Friday.
So ... can you be sort of a pariah? Can you dwell kind of in exile?
Pete Rose: Virtual hall of famer?
Does Rose have to spend the rest of his days wondering what the word “reconfigure” means? Bart Giamatti told him to reconfigure his life. But Giamatti died before he could judge Rose's reconfiguring. Who figures the reconfiguring now? Is there a textbook definition for it? Is it in a manual somewhere?
Does Rose have to spend his golden years begging for an audience with the commissioner? “I wish I could sit down with him, so he could see the passion in my eye,” Rose said Friday.
Let him in
This is sad. No 58-year-old Hit King should have to stand in the corner like a little kid for 10 years, wearing the figurative dunce cap while the teacher decides how many more blackboards he has to wash before he can rejoin the class. Especially if the teacher is Selig, the man who canceled the World Series.
“I'm not going to be naive enough to think this opens anything up for me,” Rose said.
It should, though. Shouldn't it? Enough is enough. If you're going to open the gate for the sake of a sponsor's promotion, you might as well allow Rose to walk through for keeps. The alternative is upper-case hypocritical, and we know baseball isn't that. Of course not.
Toss the self-righteous garbage. Make Rose eligible for the Hall. Be done with it. Sponsors will thank you. So will most of the rest of us.
Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454.
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