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Define Cheating Please, I Need Clarity for Pete (Rose) Sake

By Fletcher Batts

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I was watching a short documentary on Pete Rose the other day and, as a baseball fan, I felt ashamed that this man was not in the Hall of Fame. Now before you guys start spewing obscenities, let me give you one other cheaters name: George Brett.

How do you define cheating?

Do you define cheating by someone who breaks the written rules set forth for participation or do you vary the degrees of cheating and then base it on the severity of the deed.

I am one who looks at it as a whole without much of a grey area… cheating is cheating.

Pete bet on baseball.

George Brett used pine tar to get a better grip on a bat and somehow that pine tar went well beyond the legal limit and was from tip to tip (just kidding, but it was illegally placed) and he was thrown out of a game because of it.

One bet on himself and his team, the other used artificial means to get a hit.

Is there an asterisk (*) beside his Hall of Fame status?

Is either less of a player for doing what they done? That is debatable…

What is not debatable is the rule that got them both in trouble with MLB.

They both broke the rule and yet… up until this year, one was banned entirely from baseball and the other had a nice induction in 1999 for his services.

Sep 28, 2014; Cincinnati, OH, USA; Former Cincinnati Reds great Pete Rose is acknowledged by the crowd during a game with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park. The Reds won 4-1. Mandatory Credit: David Kohl-USA TODAY Sports

I am thoroughly confused.

Some cheating can be overlooked while others warrant a lifetime sentence?

Give me a second and we can talk about stats but in THIS part of the conversation the stats are irrelevant.

We are talking about deeds versus varying and subjective actions.

When I bring this argument up, I usually get a lot of “well, he didn’t bet” or “but he did that just that one time”.

A cheat is a cheat in my book (no grey area).

So how do you solve it?

Truthfully, you don’t.

But about those stats; from a historical standpoint let’s bring in another cheater we all love to hate… Barry Bonds and revisit the “asterisk plan”.

Baseball knew about steroids and PEDs. (Let’s get that out of the way)

Now, what do you do about that?

I have read multiple plans about adding asterisk beside a player’s names from a certain era (steroids). I have even seen where people stated that players should be stripped of their stats.

I HATE the asterisk plan but it is more plausible than removing stats.

Removing stats can be a very dicey and labor intensive measure that is somewhat of lighting your house on fire just to kill the spider.

If you removed a cheaters stats… say, Alex Rodriguez for example, from the history books, that will not only affect Alex but also every team, pitcher and game that he played in.

What if his one home run won the game for the team or was the deciding difference? Will history now show that game as a tie? What happened to that pitcher’s win-loss record?

Next: Braves Take 2 of 3 from Jays

What happens to the pitcher’s era that he hit the homer off of?

What if his average that year pushed another player out of a certain threshold to obtain a bonus? With that average now removed, will said team have to go back and pay that bonus because they would have been in the top 10 had Alex pushed them out of it?

What of the RBI’s, Runs Scored and other stats? Do they just go “poof” and disappear?

Back to Rose and Brett and Bonds… yeah they cheated. They broke the rules.

But please define the level of cheating that IS accepted because there is already one verified cheater in the Hall…

Please lay out the varying interpretations of what rules can be bent versus not completely being broken for a player to be NOT seen as a complete cheat, but just someone trying to get an edge.

I am not an advocate for steroids, PEDs or any sort of cheating. That is not my motive.

I am an advocate for the players.

They are regular people too.

Sure they get paid millions of dollars to entertain us but remove the $$ and you are left with a genuine human being capable of making the same dumb decisions that you and I make daily.

People are flawed and as seen with Arod, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Bonds and other; we sometimes do incredibly dumb stuff to get an edge.

We are at the doorstep of either acknowledging or ignoring an entire generation of players who either used some sort of performance enhancement or they knew about it in their own clubhouse or the opposition and yet we still juggle the Case of Pete Rose.

I’ve seen where some writers refuse to vote because of the suspected PED players on the ballot. That is incredibly selfish and a waste of a ballot.

If said suspected pitcher was on the juice versus a probable batter who was injecting or using mystery lotion… that leveled the playing field.

WE have to look at this from a fan perspective.

Apr 19, 2015; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; New York Yankees designated hitter Alex Rodriguez (13) doubles during the third inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

We’re they not entertaining?

When we saw this or that player in person or on television, did they not exemplify the meaning of baseball for you AT THAT TIME?

I think as we look back and we see that all of these PEOPLE were doing these illegal activities right in front of our faces and we “feel” a certain way about that which leads us to be judgmental and critique extra hard out of embarrassment and disappointment.

But before you found out they were popping pills, wasn’t he your favorite player?

And yet he is NOT the same PERSON as he was before? Or are you mad at yourself for liking a cheater?

It’s ok to feel dooped, but because you were wrong, now we are going to lash out at the player with tirades and belittlement? Some of it may be justified, based on how it “feels” to you personally but let’s rewind the clock… IS IT NOT THE SAME PERSON THAT WAS ON THE FIELD?

But it’s ok to cheat if you are George Brett, but not if you are Pete Rose right?

I don’t think that Brett should be removed from the Hall.

I think Pete should be in the Hall of Fame with Brett, not on a Buddy Pass but based on the product that was on the field.

He earned it.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Best wishes,

‘til next time

UnBiased Brave

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