Sporting News, The: Give Pete a chance? No way - banishment of Pete Rose from Major League Baseball

Wait a minute. Wait one stinkin' minute. Stop this bandwagon before it runs over women, children and domestic animals. Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame? Pete Rose sitting on somebody's bench deciding it's time to change pitchers? No, no, a thousand times no.

This bandwagon thing gives us all fits. Imagine the hair clutching at the Cooperstown executive offices when the panjamdrums consider which cap to put on the miscreant's plaque.

"It's gotta be MasterCard," first panjamdrum says: "If they don't do those `Greatest' promotions, no one hears fans pour out their affection for a convicted felon thought to have committed baseball's capital crime hundreds if not thousands of times."

"Priceless" second panjamdrum says.

Third chimes in, "Pete says he wants `Hit King.'"

"It's our choice," fourth says. "I like `Caesars Palace Sports Book.'"

It's so easy to be mean. Pete Rose has betrayed baseball fans for so long. And now comes commissioner Bud Selig with a plan to end Rose's lifetime suspension, make him eligible for the Hall of Fame and maybe allow him to work in baseball. It's contingent on extracting from Rose an admission he bet on games--as if any living soul west of Baghdad doesn't already know he did so.

But let's play along. Let's say he confesses. Suddenly, a hand to his chin in deep thought, he says, "Well, yeah, Bud, now that you mention it, now that you've read aloud from the 3,000 exhibits in the Dowd Report, y'know, yeah, it's kinda vague, but it's all coming back to me, like in a dream, we were on the road, I was feeling down, there was that one night ..."

The more important truth then becomes: "Wait a minute. Wait one stinkin' minute. This means he has been lying through his teeth at every opportunity for the last 14 years. So first he gambles hand over fist on games when he knows that's baseball's mortal sin? Then he looks us in the eye and flat lies forever? And now that he coughs up the obvious, we're supposed to honor, glorify and otherwise kiss his fat wallet?"

Include me out.

No Hall of Fame.

No job in baseball.

He blew it, folks. He had it all; he wanted more.

Yes, he has paid dearly for his transgressions. His 13 years out of baseball multiplied by, say, $2 million a year lost from a manager's salary might be thought of as a $26 million fine. Not to mention the shame of it, though only a peculiar form of shame drives a man to set up shop next door to the Hall of Fame and sell autographs on copies of the Dowd Report, baseball's accounting of those transgressions.

At the same time, might not $26 million compensate for only a fraction of the damage Rose has done? As for shame, when the man with the most base hits in baseball history also is identified as the game's biggest gambler ever, that shame is so far beyond computation as to be MasterCard priceless.

John Dowd's report has Rose making 388 bets for $852,400 in the first half of the 1987 season. He bet $116,600 on the Reds in 52 games. Bad enough, that. Worse, this: That's one half of one season in a career that covered 27 years. Only the most naive of us believe Rose began betting hand over fist only on April 8, 1987.

But the bandwagon of redemption and reclamation is rolling now. So I e-mailed my College of the Sportswriting Oracles and asked for opinions. The oracles' consensus: yes to the Hall, no to being in uniform.

Ray Ratto: "I believe he bet on and against his team. He is an unrepentant hyena who should be horsewhipped."

Laura Vecsey: "I am now a hard-case. He gambled on baseball. The punishment is banishment. No reinstatement."

Bernie Miklasz: "Look at his credentials as a player rather than his sins as a manager."

Billy Reed: "There's no proof Pete Rose ever did anything to affect the outcome of a game except try 4,256 ways, if necessary, to win every time he put on a uniform?'

Bob Verdi: "It's the hall of great feats, not good housekeeping."

Mark Whicker: "He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame but not back in baseball in any way, shape or form".

Joe Posnanski: "No business in baseball. But I've been through Cooperstown and did not find a single saint."

Tom Keegan: "No reinstatement unless psychiatrists agree he has successfully treated his gambling problem."

Bob Broeg: "If he comes hat in hand, apologizing, I'd vote for him. But he shouldn't be in the game. Untrustworthy."

Sally Jenkins: "No to the Hall, no to working. There is a difference between fame and notoriety, and Rose is notorious. He has his place in history: He's firmly fixed in the mind and memory as a semi-tragic scumbag. Right where be belongs."

The most bizarre aspect of this bizarre scenario is that of Bud Selig, the unabashed Midwestern-square traditionalist, devising a plan wherein the admission of gambling is reason enough to end the punishment. Why not just go all the way and create an Office of Gambling Affairs? Then hire Pete to run it.