Charlie Hustle? No thanks!

First off, I never liked Pete Rose. Actually, make that I always detested Pete Rose. And this has absolutely nothing to do with his being named the MVP of the 1975 World Series, in which Rose's team, the Cincinnati Reds, beat my team, the Boston Red Sox, in what has been characterized as the greatest World Series ever. Greatest World Series ever? Well, yes and no. (There was that thrilling scene of Carlton Fisk waving his home run safe...)

Sure, Rose was a great player/great hitter/great whatever, but I always found him obnoxious, creepy, and moronic. Charlie Hustle? Blech!

And this was before we learned about his gambling on sports, including baseball, apparently including games he was involved in. (And lying about it.) Before we learned he'd been accused of statutory rape - sex with a girl 14 or 15 when Rose was in his 30's. (Rose claimed he thought she was 16. Oh, that makes it all better.) Before Rose went to prison for tax evasion.

Rose's scuz-bucket behavior earned him a lifetime ban from baseball, which meant he wasn't electable to the Baseball Hall of Fame. No plaque for Charlie Hustle in the hallowed ground that is Cooperstown. (And, yes, I love the Hall of Fame, and love the fact that Pete Rose's visage ain't in the Plaque Gallery.)

Throughout the years of his ban, Rose did a lot of denying, a lot of whining, and a lot of showboating - including showing up in Cooperstown during the annual induction ceremonies to sign autographs (for money, of course). 

Rose died last year, unhappily (to him) but happily (to me) unadmitted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Not everyone supported the ban. A lot of baseball fans have argued that, given his obvious talent and skill on the field, Rose should be in the HOF. After all, not everyone who's got a plaque there was a saint. (Ty Cobb is usually the poster boy for bad guy baseball players, but his reputation has been rehabbed of late. I don't see Pete Rose's reputation, which is based on verifiable facts and not on perhaps-fictional tales that become truths after decades of retelling, as ever being rehabbed.)

Then last month, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred lifted the lifetime ban on Pete Rose (and others, including Shoeless Joe Jackson of Chicago Black Sox infamy). So Pete Rose is now eligible for election. If it happens, it won't be through the regular channel of election by baseball writers, but rather through election by the Old Timers Committee. Rose's chance will come up in a couple of years. I hope they vote him down.

I also hope to get to Cooperstown one more time. It's not a big bucket list item for me, but I wouldn't mind another trip there. I first went as a kid when we went on an family pilgrimage over a long Columbus Day weekend. My father was a tremendous baseball fan, and he'd also been a very good athlete. He'd played baseball, hockey, and football as a kid, but baseball was his first sporting love. The pilgrimage was for him, but he did raise baseball fans. (Four of the five "Rogers kids" are big baseball fans, and my brother Rich - who, like our father - was an accomplished multi-sport athlete, was an excellent baseball player through high school.) And my mother was also a pretty big baseball fan, having grown up in Chicago a Cubs fan, but also an equal opportunity White Sox fan. Her family were North Siders, but my mother not only went to Wrigley to root for the Cubbies, she also trekked to the South Side to watch the White Sox at Comiskey Park.

I'm pretty sure that neither of my baseball-loving parents would have cared for Pete Rose. My father would have admired his skill, that's for sure. But the gambling, the statutory raping. Nah...

My second trip to Cooperstown was a few years back when my sister Trish and I made our pilgrimage. (Trish was only a toddler the first time around so has little recall of that trek.)

Anyway, one of the reasons why Manfred unbanished Pete Rose was pressure placed on him by Trump who, not surprisingly, was a fan of Pete Rose. Trump not only lobbied Manfred, but has also said that he will pardon Rose for his federal tax evasion.

Here's hoping that the Old Timers won't be pressured by Trump into voting him in when the time comes around.

And speaking of Trump, the best piece I've read on Pete Rose being unbanished was by Will Bunch, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He placed the resurrection of Charlie Hustle within the context of Trump's treatment of a whole slew of pretty awful men. White men, to be exact. 

From a happy hour at the Pentagon for Fox News bad boy-turned-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to a U.S. government-approved Miami holiday for the alleged raping and sex trafficking Tate brothers, 2025 has been an all-night coming-out party for the world’s worst white men.

...Roughly 8% of the way into a Trump 47 presidency that already feels like an eternity, the ceaseless drive to rehabilitate the Pete Roses of an America now racing around the basepaths to undo decades of well-deserved cancellations for sexual abuse and misconduct, racism, and homophobia, and just old-fashioned immoral conduct, isn’t some odd subplot. No, the bad (white) boy restoration is central to the entire MAGA project. And the forced redemption of Rose is its spikes-first exclamation point. (Source: The Inquirer - may not be accessible if you're not a subscriber. I'm not, but got access through some outside the paywall special link on Bluesky.)

Anyway, Will Bunch's framing is spot on. But even if there wasn't some Trumpian pressure to bear, even if there isn't the obvious - once you read it - connection to Trump's fondness for bad boys, especially when their bad boy-ness is sexual in nature, I think that making it possible for Pete Rose to slide - spikes up - into the Hall of Fame is a terrible idea. Hope that the Old Timers do the right thing!

I so don't want to see Rose's creepy visage on a plaque. 

Charlie Hustle? No thanks! 

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Image Source: Deadline.