Pete Rose's conjectured return to the good graces of Major League Baseball has unleashed a wave of anticipation among Reds fans while pundits ruminate on the appropriate conditions of forgiveness. The conversation is driven excessively through the olive-branched pathways of sinfulness, redemption and face saving without sufficient heed to the truly challenging problems or solutions.
Once we cut through all the clutter, the correct requirement for Rose's return is simple and demanding. Rose absolutely must be finished with gambling. He probably shouldn't even be going to the horse track. He must be weaned from bookmakers and owe them nothing.
Major League Baseball has to know it. As a matter of security, MLB ought to conduct an investigation of Rose's recent past every bit as thorough as the Dowd Report, if not more so, to make certain his return doesn't bring gamblers, bookmakers and thugs with him. Furthermore, MLB must be prepared to keep a very close eye on Rose for the rest of his days in baseball -- and, having said that, it's pleasing to consider that The Hit King might have more days in baseball.
But Rose's possible future days in baseball will raise serious questions for the game's credibility if the commissioner's office doesn't accompany his reinstatement with a serious commitment to making sure he's clean. Force Rose into treatment as a condition for his return, if necessary. Tail him with a private investigator. Just make damn sure.
For all the reports and opinions that have circulated in the past week, one would think these conditions for a legitimate reinstatement are off the table. Some people just want Rose to "admit" he bet on baseball, and others want him to apologize for what he's done. We're so worried about the unresolved past that we aren't asking enough questions about an unresolved future.
However Rose chooses to address the past as part of a reinstatement agreement -- whether he says "I did it" or "I'm sorry" -- it doesn't really matter. Neither statement would seriously address the risks MLB takes with a reinstatement. Those risks lie in the future.
It's already hard enough to stomach a reinstatement based on Rose's admission, in which case he'd be rewarded at the very moment all doubt that he bet on baseball has been removed. That already says MLB is more concerned about its image than its integrity, as if we didn't already know.
But it wouldn't be very good for MLB's image, either. And former Commissioner Fay Vincent is absolutely right on this: Whatever Rose is compelled to say as a condition for reinstatement, he can just come back a couple days later and inform us that he said it only for reinstatement.
And what if Rose isn't free of gambling? Where is MLB if it has to investigate new gambling allegations? What could be more embarrassing than the possibility, let alone the reality, of suspending Rose again, especially when its motivation and stated conditions for reinstatement are so clearly crafted for public relations?
Perhaps MLB believes it should go without saying that Rose's return is contingent on his escape from gambling. Given Commissioner Bud Selig's silence on that requirement, however, as well as his gift for missing the point -- embodied, once again, by his preoccupation with the Santa Claus question -- it really doesn't go without saying. MLB needs to say it and mean it.
All will remember that the questions as to whether or not Rose bet on baseball resulted from MLB's failure to issue a finding when it suspended Rose in 1989. MLB's rigorous investigation, tainted by hints that then-Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti prejudged the case, turned up extremely strong evidence that Rose bet on baseball, falling short of a smoking gun tying him to a specific bet for a specific amount with a specific bookmaker on a specific game. Nonetheless, most reasonable people say the evidence speaks loud enough, while many fewer protest its shortcomings.
Giamatti and Rose could have fought it out to the end. Giamatti could have declared a finding that Rose bet on baseball and suspended him for life. Rose could have gone to court and protested violations of his due process.
But neither side wanted this to land in the courts. Rose had dipped himself into so much low life that a court proceeding would surely uncover more serious transgressions and, indeed, he ended up going to the can on a tax evasion charge anyway. Meanwhile, the commissioner's office feigned no interest in risking its authority with an activist judiciary.
The two sides were at a stalemate and undertook negotiations. Ultimately, Giamatti, the Italian Renaissance scholar and former Yale University president, resorted to tricking the river rat from Sedamsville. Rose and Giammati signed an agreement saying MLB had established a factual basis for a lifetime suspension due to Rose's involvement with gamblers. The agreement provided that Rose could apply for reinstatement in one year, instead of the seven-year period of precedent, and that no finding had been established as to whether Rose did or didn't bet on baseball.
At the press conference announcing the suspension, Giamatti, standing in front of the MLB seal in his official capacity as commissioner, said he believed Rose bet on baseball, attempting to reach a finding in the realm of public opinion when he couldn't get it done in the enforcement process. Two years later, MLB twisted the Hall of Fame's arm to exclude persons suspended from the game, unilaterally and quite intentionally imposing an additional penalty on Rose that hadn't been provided in the suspension agreement.
From the beginning, this suspension has been a botch and a huge mess, owing to MLB's dubious sense of justice. Individual acts of injustice can be remedied by a justice system, but when the prosecution of justice is itself systematically unjust, then all hope for justice is lost.
Twice under pressure from MasterCard, the unsung hero of Rose supporters, even MLB acknowledged its flimsy and convenient sense of justice by allowing Rose on the field at the World Series to top off national sponsor promotions. In each case, Rose received by far the longest and loudest ovations, upstaging the other greats while the game's official policy deemed him unworthy of their company. Meanwhile, MLB repeatedly denied Rose's involvement in Cincinnati ceremonies designed to honor the Reds' history.
At least twice per year, either MLB mocks the suspension or Rose does or the Reds do. The time for resolving the matter is long past. But only now is Selig seriously considering it.
By his various missteps, Selig's public esteem has taken a hard beating in the past year. He wants baseball fans to like him, he knows baseball fans want Rose back, he knows he's compromised the suspension and he knows, regardless of strong evidence, that MLB doesn't have a finding that Rose bet on baseball.
Selig also knows two markets in which Rose is historically central -- Cincinnati and Philadelphia -- are opening new stadiums in the next two years and need another shot in the arm. So he's making a peace offering.
Selig would be perfectly justified in lifting the suspension at this point because, regardless of the rhetoric, Rose isn't suspended for betting on baseball. He's suspended for consorting with gamblers, which doesn't carry a lifetime suspension. MLB absolutely needed to take strong action, which now has added up to 13 years of suspension, plenty enough punishment.
That considered, it should be remarkable that MLB is so insistent on receiving an admission with regard to charges on which Rose wasn't suspended. But it isn't really so remarkable. MLB wants vindication for Giamatti's declaration of guilt, and only Rose can provide it.
Rose should have been in the Hall of Fame 10 years ago. There should never have been any question about it and, at the very least, MLB should prevail on the Hall of Fame to lift the restriction by which he's excluded.
Rose's full reinstatement, however, is a far more difficult matter that shouldn't be entered lightly. Even the gambling to which he's admitted poses severe danger to the game's legitimacy. So the success of his reinstatement depends entirely on his deliverance from gambling and not even a little on whether he opens up to the baseball world so it can demonstrate its grand capacity for forgiveness.
Indeed, the entire discussion of forgiveness in the matter of Rose is complete hogwash. A vindictive society masquerades as a forgiving society when it says things like, "We will forgive you, but only if you vindicate us by admitting to transgressions that we couldn't find."
Rose and MLB don't need to establish that he bet on baseball. They need to establish that gambling will never again darken their door. Unfortunately, it's too easy to suspect that MLB's obsession with past wrongs will compromise its prevention of future wrongs.
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