For those who missed it, the Jack Casino was recently rebranded as a Hard Rock Casino, and its opening night featured Cincinnati’s own legend, Pete Rose (now a Vegas resident), to make the inaugural table-games bet. That was appropriate, entertaining, ironic, and sad. Like having an alcoholic make the toast at a wedding.
Now 80, Pete Rose is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame, despite having the record of 4256 career hits (shoutout to my boy, Ichiro, who is in that conversation). The reason? Because in 1989, Rose was banned from Major League Baseball for life, making him ineligible. Why was he banned from baseball? Did he drive 150+ mph on a Vegas residential street and kill someone? No!! Did he beat his girlfriend unconscious in a hotel elevator? Nooo!!!! Did he threaten to jam a tennis ball down the line judge’s f***ing throat? Not once. Did he get caught video-taping opponents? Did he get caught deflating balls (and then lie about it)? Did he jack up on steroids to boost his power hitting? Did he steal signals and implement a team-wide system to cheat his way to a World Series? As far as I know, he didn’t do any of those things.
His great sin is that he’s a degen gambler. And like most embarrassed, ashamed degens, he lied about it. Commissioner Bart Giamatti concluded that Rose bet on baseball, which Rose initially denied, but has since admitted. Many players have lied to MLB and the world. Ryan Braun lied about PEDs with righteous indignation, before eventually admitting and accepting his ties to the Biogenesis scandal that implicated a dozen big-name players. Braun was banned for 65 games, which is a lot less than life.
The PED era (cheating so rampant, involving so many players, that baseball writers had to invoke the label “era”) absolutely involved cheating affecting the game outcome. And the infamous Black Sox scandal in 1919 involved players alleged to have tanked the game. Pete Rose’s gambling fits into neither category. He claims, “I bet on my team to win every night because I love my team, I believe in my team. I did everything in my power every night to win that game.” Other than MLB’s rejoinder that Rose bet almost every game, and a really weak third-party allegation that Rose strategically exempted some games from wagering, there has been virtually no disputation of Rose’s claim in that regard.
So it’s hard to fathom what an outlier Pete Rose’s penalty has been. If Bart Giamatti had not died unexpectedly just days after Rose’s ban, Rose perhaps would have been ultimately reinstated. Current Commissioner Rob Manfred denied Rose’s petition in 2015, stating that reinstatement of Rose would pose an “unacceptable risk.” Risk of what, exactly?
Vegas now has professional sports teams. ESPN now talks about betting lines, and even has a “Bad Beats” segment that is very entertaining. MLB and other leagues are embracing gambling, with sponsorship deals with casinos and gaming companies like Betfair. In-game betting apps on phones will soon be widespread, and fans in the stadium will be able to gamble while drinking a beer and eating a hot dog. The national pastime is not baseball; it’s betting on baseball. (Even a boring coin flip gets interesting if you have a bet on it!)
I’m not making any arguments that are different from what Rose’s own people have said. What I can add is my own experience witnessing degens, thousands of them over my career. If gambling is a vice (and that’s something we can debate some other time), it is one that is universal. Degen gambling is not restricted to the poor, the uneducated, or any particular racial minority. To the contrary, people of all ages, races, genders, and nations love to gamble. And the addiction that a degen has is extremely powerful, just as much so as alcoholism. If Pete Rose were an alcoholic, and consequently lied about his drinking, would he be banned from baseball for life? I doubt it.
Degens always lie, so I’m not sure that Rose’s lies merit much additional punishment on top of being a sports degen in the first place. It is no secret that I have no love for degens, but it is hypocritical for MLB to villify Rose’s degeneracy. Reading through all of Manfred’s gobbledygook, I think the only basis for Rose’s continuing ban is MLB’s stubbornness, or a slippery-slope fallacy that if they forgive Rose, they would have to forgive the transgressions of players and managers over the last couple decades. If part of the cost of degeneracy is the loss of one’s professional legacy, then so be it; I won’t lose any sleep for Pete Rose. But if Commissioner Manfred wants to read the room, then my vote is to remove the ban on Pete Rose, let him coach if some team wants to hire him, and then let the Hall of Fame voters decide his fate.
Or, if MLB would rectify the sentencing disparity the other way—by banning Jose Altuve and the other bums for life—I’m all in favor of that. I was really happy to see the Houston Astros lose the 2021 World Series to the Atlanta Braves. Sorry, Mattress Mack.
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Every day of Rose’s professional life, he walked into a clubhouse past a sign that explained if you gamble on baseball, you’re banned for life. He lied about betting until he thought he could make some money by admitting it in a book; then his “shame” disappeared. He’s the only one who knows for sure if he bet against his team, but I don’t know how anybody could take his word for anything.
There are people in the HOF who acted way worse than Rose. (Ty Cobb being the prime example.) But Rose literally bet that he was bigger than baseball. He lost.
I don’t disagree with anything you said, but: (1) I don’t think that the “reason” for his betting is he felt he is above the rules–he is a straight-up gambling degen who can’t NOT gamble, for whatever punishment you deem fitting for a degen/alcoholic, (2) No one in MLB gets punished for anything. Why haven’t Altuve and Co. been banned for life? They absolutely cheated in a way that affected the game, and the legacies of some of their opponents (like Kershaw, who got a reputation as a choker in the playoffs, but quite possibly he was cheated against).
Pete Rose…
1) Played baseball
2) Is famous
3) Made a lot of money in his career
He shouldn’t give a flying you know what about some stupid Hall of Fame. Even if it does give you free hotel rooms for life! 😉
I suspect he’s basically broke, due to gambling, so your #3 probably doesn’t console him. And #2 might be: “he’s infamous.” Probably all he’s got left is legacy, so I think the Hall means a lot to him, though he might say it doesn’t. But it must irk him to see nothing happen to the Astros players.
Cheating has always been a part of baseball. Gaylord Perry? Ty Cobb? Sammy Sosa? (A two-for-one! Corked bat AND steroids!)
The difference is that MLB, for good or ill, has always looked at gambling on the game as a special category of misbehavior, thus the signs about it in every major league clubhouse. One can argue this heightened penalty is disproportionate, but it’s been applied (IMO) pretty consistently. Other players were suspected of throwing games and gambling, but they either didn’t confess or the charge wasn’t proven.
What type of cheating did Ty Cobb supposedly engage in?
I believe that the reason gambling is treated differently is: (1) Gambling itself had a social stigma as a vice, which has changed greatly in recent years, but more so is (2) The belief that if someone bets the game, there will be tanking. (Since there is an asymmetry that it’s easier to force a loss than to force a win.) So the integrity of the competitive game itself is threatened to a great degree. But if the rules writers saw how much the recent cheating can affect the game, I think they’d put in harder penalties on that, too. The main reason there hasn’t been a bigger disruption in game outcomes is because so many of the players are cheating. But how can MLB punish the managers of the Astros, and the team itself, but not punish the players AT ALL? I hope future collective bargaining agreements weaken the power of the player’s union to defend cheating. OR, I’m totally okay with saying that you’re allowed to steal the opposing team’s signs. I’m shocked that the pitchers and catchers don’t have some type of code that changes from one game to the next that is easy to use but hard to hack. Only the catcher and the pitcher have to know the signals. And the catcher can even use a different system with each pitcher. I use different signals for different BPs, depending on what they’re most comfortable with.
The AP Lexicon has now adopted MP, a term Grosjean has championed, as the preferred term over Scavenger, Hustler (or Bonus Hustler), Vulture, Camper, Farmer, Sweeper, Cherry Picker, etc.
If you can’t be conversant in the AP argot, the real APs are not going to take you seriously. Btw, I’m not an AP since I retired a long time ago but I still do consulting work for other APs.
Here’s a simple litmus test: If you *cannot* do math at the AP level, then chances are you are not an AP. For example, Fortune Garden or Fortune Gold (which involves a stochastic process of awarding the prize) is one of the easiest bonus game to beat: It is easily solved with option math.
Do you think MPs understand option math?
Pete Rose absolutely deserves to be in the Hall Of Fame, he was the best hitter in history, literally nobody was better at hitting a line drive to centerfield… Well written piece, degenerative gambling is dangerous, and degenerate gamblers need love, I was one myself during my youth… I have addiction issues, over the years I have developed strategies to address them, the strategy that works for me is my ability to look at myself honestly, then take action. For example I can not smoke weed anymore, if I smoke I smoke all day, and it is detrimental. As an avid poker player I identify players who are addicted to gambling, many of them are what I call “thrillseekers”, they are way more likely to go on tilt than a grounded strategic player. Always look for angles, look at personalities, and patterns, remember faces, even masked faces. Anyone who pays close attention to me and my game can read me, I rarely deviate, but I don’t make bank on the better players generally, I make bank on the people who are shallow. If someone at the poker table brags about winning at roulette, jot that down in your head, it’s information. Around 40 years ago I gambled my entire two week paycheck away at a poker table, those two weeks taught me a lesson I have never forgot. The rest of my life as a poker player was born, I have never backslid very far since, I set guardrails…
Two points to consider:
A) While he has said that he never bet against his team, if I recall correctly the investigation revealed that at various times he owed lots of money (into the hundreds of thousands) from his losing wagers. These were illegal bets, not placed at something like a regulated sports book. Based on other things I’ve read about who he owed money to, it’s quite plausible that he received pressure (in the form of threats, or as a way to absolve debt) to affect the outcome of games. We’ll never know for sure, but it’s certainly believable.
B) Regardless, even if the pressure wasn’t to lose outright, and even if he never-ever-not-even-once bet on the Reds to lose while he was managing them, his bets to win could have adversely affected many aspects of a game. Say for example he had a large bet on a random Tuesday night game against the Expos, and not so big on the days after based on the pitching match-ups. Does he alter his strategy to win that night at the cost of the rest of the series? Change his bullpen strategy, bring a guy off the bench early from injury rehab, start someone on 3 days rest, pinch hit or make a defensive swap or some other desperate move just to win that night? His entire day-to-day managing style could have easily been influenced by any/all individual wagers at the cost of the big-picture/what was best for the season as a whole or for individual players. Maybe a player needs a day or two to rest during a long road trip in August in order to be fresh for the September stretch run towards the playoffs. Nope, Pete needs him to play that night because he has a 25k bet to win. Or, to protect a 9-3 lead based on the spread), Rose inserts a reliever he normally wouldn’t use with a large lead. Now that pitcher struggles the next day when he’s needed to protect a 1-run, and maybe he gives up the lead and the Reds lose because the manager needed to secure yesterday’s 6-run win instead of a 3-run win. There are dozens (at least) of decisions a manager makes every day/week/month like that. They wouldn’t be obvious moves looking from the outside, but they add up.
Maybe the friendly people he owed didn’t mind if he bet the Reds to win, as long as he made starting lineup choices they wanted so they could bet them to lose, or so they would have an edge about the spread or the game the next day. Even if none of that happened, the possibility existed every single game. And even if we believe he didn’t bet on his team to lose, those day-to-day decisions affect the outcome of both that game and those to come.
Sure, those are all reasons the rules against betting on a game you’re a player/manager in exist. But I haven’t seen any study showing convincing evidence of game manipulation (not that it didn’t happen, but we’ll probably never have the data required–mainly, the amount wagered on each game), but there is VERY convincing evidence of Astros cheating, to the point that MLB fined the Astros team the maximum $5 million, and suspended two managers for an entire season (still not life), but NOTHING happened to the players. AND, the Astros’ cheating probably affected the World Series, not just an inconsequential midseason game for a non-contending team. I don’t really care what penalty Rose gets–I just want to see some consistency. So if no Astros players are going to be punished (which seems 100% to be the case at this point), then I think they should lighten up on Rose.
Kudos to the Hard Rock Casino for inviting Pete Rose to make the inaugural table games bet, they made the right decision. After all Vegas is known as Sin City and they’re living up to that name. He should be in the Hall of Fame and no matter how much MLB wants to demonize Pete they can’t take away his World Series rings and erase his records. MLB should be ashamed of themselves for acting like a bunch of degenerates.
People saying the Astros cheated in the 2017 World Series is substantiated on baseless claims which is meaningless and utter BS. Baseball is a game about execution, situational awareness, and the team that plays better is going to win. The manager for the Dodgers as well as the team lost that World Series. There is no way that Yu Darvish should have started Game 7 and that was the coach’s fault as the game was literally lost in the first few innings. A college team would have beat Yu Darvish that night.
Agreed about consistency, or lack of it at times, but MLB has been consistent about that one aspect (betting on games, especially those you are in). Ask the White Sox. Shoeless Joe has a more compelling case than Rose, imo.
Also, Pete is the one who signed a document saying he accepted a lifetime ban in exchange for MLB not releasing the evidence against him. It’s his own fault for not believing that they really meant it. That, along with violating the policy in the first place, every day, for years, knowing the risk. Pete knows baseball history very well, so he knew the consequences. I’m not saying they’re fair, but they weren’t a surprise.
As far as the Astros go…. their fans like to point out that the team hit better on the road in the WS, so it wasn’t really an advantage. That line of thinking musses the point that regardless of outcome, they still did it. You don’t go free for attempted bank robbery if you fail to get any money
I saw that study, in a non-peer reviewed journal, which among other flaws didn’t control for who the pitcher was! If the scam wasn’t massively beneficial, why would the Astros have done it? The study authors conjecture that these idiots just aren’t aware of the analytics that their sign-stealing scam doesn’t really work. To me that’s like a YouTuber using data from a card counter’s losing session to conclude that it doesn’t even work, so why would anyone do it. We don’t have enough good data and understanding to know the details of the scheme. Do we even know if every player on the team was involved in it? But, as you say, not getting results doesn’t mean they didn’t employ a massive cheating scam. I’m sure many steroid users are disappointed in their own home run numbers.
I like your take Dave in Atlanta. As for JG’s comment about multiple sets of signs, this was being employed in this year’s series.
James, I read a good article about how the current NCAA Football structure leads to the demise of entire conferences. Have you written about the NCAA Commission? I’d like to hear your take.
If Pete Rose bet on his team every night with the exact same bet size then it’s a no brainer he should be back in baseball. But he didn’t. Therefore not betting on his team is almost like betting against them.
Do NOT insert “cheating” into this discussion to water-down the more specifical transgression – BETTING on his team’s while he was Manager.
While Astros cheating may have some analytical symmetry to Rose’ betting, the 2 aren’t the same – the Astros didn’t engage in gambling in its games!