Rose Aspires to Hall’s Long Line of Scoundrels

He ranks among the greatest hitters in baseball history, played second base, third base and the outfield during his career, didn’t read much for fear it would ruin his batting eye and was hopelessly addicted to gambling.

He was a regular at the racetrack, and when he couldn’t be there, he would phone in his bets from the road. During one two-year span, he wagered more than $327,000. He was constantly in debt, and, as a manager, would sometimes borrow money from his players to cover losses.

When questioned about his predicament by the commissioner, he said, “It is my recreation, and it is gambling.”

Another time, he claimed, “Never -- get that -- never has my wagering in any way interfered with my affairs on the diamond. A ballgame always is a fight to me, and nothing else enters into it.”

In his ghostwritten autobiography, he confessed that “I’ve ‘cheated’ or watched someone else on my team ‘cheat’ in practically every game. When I played second base, I used to trip, kick, elbow or spike anybody I could. If a big league ballplayer doesn’t like cutting the corners or playing with ‘cheaters,’ then he’s as much out of place as a missionary in Russia.”

His name was Rogers Hornsby, and he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1942.

Hornsby titled his autobiography “My War With Baseball,” which sounds like the inspiration for Pete Rose’s current “My Prison Without Bars.” Same theme, similar grudge, but only Hornsby has a plaque hanging on a wall in Cooperstown.

Once, Hornsby’s team president confronted him about his gambling. “Nobody’s damn business,” Hornsby shot back -- which was pretty much Rose’s response too, until it dawned on him that, after 14 years, that attitude wasn’t inching him any closer to the Hall of Fame.

Hornsby is in the Hall, and Rose isn’t, because Hornsby bet on horse races and horse races only, and Rose didn’t.

That is the main difference between two men so similar is so many ways, their lives seem joined at the OTB slip.

Hornsby died in January 1963. Rose made his major league debut a few months later. ESPN has a Rose movie in the works. Should it be called “Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Charlie Hustle and Hornsby’s Ghost”?

Hornsby was smarter than Rose in that he never bet on baseball. Give the Hall of Fame some credit for having standards. The Hall is stocked with drunks and drug users, racists and murderers, cheaters and cretins, even gamblers, provided they placed their wagers on the horses or the Colts -- on anything, really, except a major league baseball game.

Rose’s new book is a strategic gamble and nothing more, a reluctant, unconvincing confessional that has the feel of just one more transaction slipped under the window: You want me to confess, I’ll confess -- but now what can you do for me?

Another book makes a better argument for Rose’s inclusion in the Hall of the Fame, and it was written 10 years ago. In 1994, Richard Scheinin chronicled what he called “a panoply of villainy” in “Field of Screams: The Dark Underside of America’s National Pastime.”

The book takes a look at the unsavory reality beneath the baseball myth, and takes on Cooperstown in the process.

“They say Pete Rose isn’t fit to be in the Hall of Fame,” Scheinin wrote. “Pete consorted with gamblers and bet on baseball, maybe even on the team he managed, the Cincinnati Reds.

“Well, let’s take a stroll through the Hall of Fame.

“[Ty] Cobb was caught up in a gambling scandal in 1926. So was Tris Speaker. [John] McGraw invested in a Manhattan pool hall frequented by hustlers. One of his partners was Arnold Rothstein, the mobster reputedly behind the 1919 Black Sox scandal.”

Cobb was the first man inducted into the Hall, in 1936, which set the character bar awfully low from the start. He and Speaker, a 1937 inductee, were charged with conspiring to fix the final game of the 1919 season.

Both were eventually acquitted, but in 1926, both resigned their managerial positions in an apparent attempt to defuse the investigation.

John Clarkson is also in the Hall. Clarkson won 53 games for the Chicago White Stockings in 1885 ... and later slashed his wife to death with a razor.

Leo Durocher was elected to the Hall in 1994. As a manager, Durocher used to slip $100 bills into the lockers of pitchers who threw at the heads of opposing hitters. He was suspended for the 1947 season for associating with gamblers and was investigated in 1971 for gambling allegations that were eventually dropped.

Considering the neighborhood, Scheinin today believes Rose should be allowed to take up residence.

“The Hall is filled with scoundrels -- gamblers, even violent criminals,” Scheinin said via e-mail. “Many people believe Ty Cobb killed a man in an alley fight. Pete’s a creep, and you wish he’d show some real remorse, but his sins pale by comparison ...

“If [Babe] Ruth showed up today, acting as he did in his day, he’d be barred from the Hall for being a lout and a drunk. Gambling’s far more egregious.

“But I say, make Rose do the ‘mea culpa’ thing, do a ton of community service, and then let the writers vote on his baseball skills.

“Then let Shoeless Joe [Jackson] in too. These are some of the greatest players of all time. I’d rather see them in the Hall than Rabbit Maranville, who had a .258 average. I suppose I’m ducking the ethics, but that’s how I feel.

“Maybe put a sentence on Rose’s plaque, and on Shoeless Joe’s, about their character defects. That way, kids will understand that these are flawed heroes -- not a bad lesson for kids to learn. But let them in on the basis of their accomplishments on the field.”

That one sentence on the plaque would be important. It would also be more educational, and more honest, than any of those in Rose’s new book.