Did he really need one? At one time I was on his side, but he's become thoroughly unlikeable as time goes on. He's one of those guys George was talking about, except he got exposed. The HOF is full of guys who if you knew everything about them you'd say they didn't belong. Pete Rose is one of the guys we do know about.
We have to remember the history of baseball and the worst scandal to rock the sport. Nothing was more devastating than the Black Sox scandal. It went to the very integrity of the game. It wasn't one player trying to get an edge by breaking a rule, it was flat out fraud. And of course the snakes who financed that scandal were the gamblers. That's why there is one rule in baseball you cannot break and that's betting on the game while you're in it. And let's face it, good Ole' Petie didn't just bend of break a few rules in baseball, he ended up behind bars because some of his many lies were to Uncle Sam on his taxes. It wasn't enough he made a lot of money playing and managing in baseball. It wasn't enough he can make good money at autograph signings. He had to cheat on his taxes too.
:!: :arrow: What about the worst scandal that didn't rock the sport? 1926 - Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker were permitted by Ban Johnson to resign from baseball near the end of the 1926 season after former pitcher Dutch Leonard charged that Cobb, Speaker and Smoky Joe Wood had joined him just before the 1919 World Series in betting on a game they all knew was fixed. Leonard presented letters and other documents to Johnson, and Johnson thought they would be so potentially damaging to baseball in the wake of the Black Sox scandal that he paid Leonard $20,000 to have them suppressed. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis exposed the cover-up and the eventual fallout forced Johnson out his job as president of the league he had created. Cobb and Speaker vehemently denied any wrongdoing, Cobb saying that "There has never been a baseball game in my life that I played in that I knew was fixed,? and that the only games he ever bet on were two series games in 1919, when he lost $150 on games thrown by the Sox. He claimed his letters to Leonard had been misunderstood, that he was merely speaking of business investments. Landis took the case under advisement and eventually let both players remain in baseball because they had not been found guilty of fixing any game themselves. It was after this case, though, that Landis instituted the rule mandating that any player found guilty of betting on baseball would be suspended for a year and that any player found to have bet on his own team would be barred for life. Cobb later claimed that the attorneys representing him and Speaker had brokered their reinstatement by threatening to expose further scandal in baseball if the two were not cleared. http://www.si.com/vault/1989/06/12/120042/the-cobb-gambling-scandal
Jim makes my point more eloquently than I ever could. We can get on our soapbox about Rose, A-Rod or anyone else but the hallowed halls of Cooperstown were breached a long time ago by every manner of scoundrel.
George, who is on a soapbox re: Rodriguez or Rose or any other former player? Certainly not I. There's no soapbox material here. It's pretty cut and dried. In Rose's case, there is a rule. The rule was known by the individual. The individual knowingly broke the rule. The individual has been held accountable according to the rule. End of story.
If Jim's post made any point it's that baseball players and betting on baseball games has been the biggest threat to baseball. Everyone involved in the game knows or should know that baseball will not tolerate the breaking of that rule. And just in case players today are a little unsure of how serious that rule is, they can read about Pete Rose and remember. As to Arod his problems are now not with the commissioner's office but the guardians of the HOF. They apparently don't think that players who not only broke the rules of the game but actually broke criminal laws to enhance their performance really don't deserve to have their "accomplishments" celebrated.