As the baseball playoffs are in full swing and the U.S. presidential election approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about one of America’s most polarizing figures. A serial liar, an unrepentant womanizer, a convicted criminal, and a charismatic hero to millions of people.
I don’t know who comes to mind, but I’m thinking of Pete Rose.
For those unfamiliar with Rose, who passed away this week at the age of 83, he was one of the greatest baseball players to ever take the field. A stubborn, rough-and-tumble athlete who was all about winning, nicknamed “Charlie Hustle,” Rose led his hometown Cincinnati Reds to two world titles in the 1970s and hit more bases than anyone in history. I piled up. Decades later, he still holds that record by a wide margin and will likely never be broken.
However, a Major League Baseball investigation in the late 1980s found that Rose violated rules by betting on baseball games that he participated in and coached. He lied about it and was banned for life from MLB. The Baseball Hall of Fame voted to permanently remove him from the nomination list.
Despite calls for his reinstatement from many players, fans and sportswriters, and a clumsy late-season reconciliation campaign by Rose himself, MLB and the Hall of Fame never relented.
This is important. Because, unlike the man I reminded you of in my introduction (and many other powerful people in America), Rose has something that is rare in today’s public life: the real consequences of doing something really bad. Because I faced it.
It didn’t matter that Rose was one of the greats. Or that he was very popular. It didn’t matter that he had a quick bat, intense charisma, or an inspiring life story. Still, he paid the price.
Imagine if our politics always worked like that. What if, for example, there was a real cost to undermining the legitimacy of an election, the World Series of Democracies, or to endlessly telling vast numbers of people obvious lies?In other words, what if there was a real cost to the game? Imagine if you were kicked out of the game for messing with the integrity of the game.
Rather, we live in a world of increasingly diverse narratives, in which we excuse the criminal acts of players on our own political team because we tell ourselves that the other side is far worse. The future of civilization is always at stake in the bottom of the ninth inning.
So the contrast between Pete’s world and the world of politics could not be more stark. Sports Illustrated baseball editor Ted Keith, who supports Rose’s suspension, says in an excellent new documentary about Rose, “Integrity must be the bedrock of professional sports, if not the bedrock of public life.” “It must be done.”
But like many things in modern baseball, this story also has an asterisk.
*If we want a society where people respect rules and laws, those laws must be enforced in a fair and reasonably consistent manner.
Here, Rose’s story serves as an example of what not to do if you are an authority. Why, many wonder, was Rose banned from baseball for game gambling when the team that won the World Series after a season of cheating was not seriously sanctioned?
Why weren’t Barry Bonseth and Mark McGuires suspended for breaking the all-time record while injecting illegal steroids into their eyes in the 1990s?
When baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani was reportedly involved in a gambling scandal earlier this year, why did everyone simply accept the explanation that his Japanese interpreter placed the bet? “Oh, I wish I had an interpreter,” Rose said of the incident.
This is crackerjack stuff compared to what’s going on outside of baseball.
People’s view is that if you kill civilians, some countries will receive support, while others will receive sanctions. They fear that some leaders will be accused of sexual misconduct while others receive book deals, that some rioters will be sentenced and others will garner sympathy. know. They note that some speech is deemed “violent” while other speech is declared “free,” and believe that “the fix is in.”
In baseball, and more importantly in the world outside of baseball, we either have a reasonably consistent “rule-based order” or we don’t.
If not, is it any wonder our hustlers become heroes?
