Lying Liars: Pete Rose's Hall of Shame

I am sick of the hypocrites: Robert S. McNamara (lying about Vietnam); WIlliam Jefferson Clinton (lying about Monica Lewinsky); George W. Bush (lying about WMD in Iraq); and now, Peter Rose (lying about lying about betting on baseball). Who cares! Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right stops short. The Left has its share of liars, too. Pete Rose and the rest of the Lying Liars belong in the Hall of Shame. This summer, the youth baseball organizers in Amarillo brought Lyin' Pete Rose to Amarillo to inspire the youth in this city. No one has any shame any longer. Rose appeared venal, crude, and corrupt as ever. It was embarrassing and shameful. If this be (fair & balanced) despair, so be it.

[x The New Republic]
The Hustler
by Sacha Zimmerman

Last week brought the stunning announcement from former baseball great Peter Rose that, after years of denial and even vehement protestation, he did in fact gamble on baseball. Despite having been banned from the sport for life, and despite his claims of wanting to participate in the game at a managerial level--two great reasons to come clean--Rose's confession appeared timed to arrive at the tail end of the 20-year window in which he can be inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame on the sports writers' ballot--his only realistic shot. This overt play for consideration has raised the question of whether or not Rose is being contrite enough. As Tom Verducci, senior writer at Sports Illustrated has said, "He knew the rule. ... The question is, does he go far enough in terms of showing some apology and some real admission that, hey, I have harmed the game."

From the Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin's (who recently dangled his infant son within inches of a hungry reptile) crocodile tears to Bill Clinton's Lewinsky mea culpa, the world seems to be in a constant state of apology. Expressing contrition and apologizing "if I offended anyone" has become a national pastime on a par with Rose's beloved baseball. The media drools over the kind of scandals that precipitate an apology and then falls over itself to analyze every word, every shifty gaze, every inflection in tone, and every motive for the reckoning. For their part, Americans feed on every sorry moment, eating crow with a fallen hero or delighting in a reviled figure's misfortune.

And usually for good reason. Judging politicians on their contrition is useful since a politician's success is wrapped up with how he connects with voters, and whether he can persuade them of his good intentions. Trent Lott needed to go on a media blitz of penitence after he basically embraced Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential platform in 2002; he couldn't be effective as majority leader unless he proved he wasn't oblivious to the offense he'd committed. In the end, his crime proved too great for an apology to save him, but he would have been demoted sooner or out of a job entirely without an attempt at atonement. Meanwhile, though Bill Clinton's crime was less obviously relevant to his performance in office, his confessional after l'affaire Lewinsky was also a must: Even sound policies will be rendered moot if the president doesn't have the trust and respect of the people, something Clinton badly needed to win back.

But the usefulness of judging people based on their contrition goes out the window in sports. Whereas politics is based largely on personality and perception, success in sports is impersonal, based on specific and highly measurable output, and grounded in rules. The Lakers don't care what Kobe Bryant did in a hotel room in Colorado as long as he continues to put up 30 points per game and stays out of jail. Should Kobe have begged for our forgiveness? Who cares! It's not like Bryant is going to be voting on sexual-harassment legislation any time soon. On the other hand, Sammy Sosa can be as sorry and teary-eyed as Tammy Faye Baker after an audit, but, from here on out, fans will always wonder just how many of his home runs he hit with corked bats. In sports, it doesn't matter if you break the rules off the field, but break the rules on the field and every ounce of contrition in your body won't help your cause.

Rose's is admittedly a slightly more complicated case than Sosa's, because even under the worst case scenario--that he bet against his own team while he was a player--breaking the rules should have depressed his lifetime statistics, not inflated them. In this sense, it might seem strange to deny baseball's all-time hit leader a chance at the Hall of Fame because he could have racked up more hits had he been more honest about the way he played the game.

But, as it happens, Rose represents an even bigger threat to the integrity of baseball--and to the integrity of baseball statistics in particular--than a bat-corker like Sosa. That's because, by betting on his own team, Rose undermined both his own stats and those of everyone around him. For example, it's possible that Rose could have benched star players while managing the Cincinnati Reds for no other reason than to ensure his team lost a game he was betting on. By doing so, he would have depressed their season and career stats. Problem is, admission to the Hall of Fame is about relative, not absolute, achievement: When you depress other people's stats, you by definition inflate your own. We have no idea how much better other players would have looked in comparison with Rose had he not been betting on the game. And even if the effect was exceedingly marginal, as it almost surely was, it certainly wouldn't have stayed that way if betting was allowed or even tolerated. In any case, no amount of Pete Rose saying he's sorry is going to help us figure out exactly how large the effect was. (Rose, it should be pointed out, continues to deny that he bet against his own team. But, again, the whole problem is we have no way of knowing.)

So I think it's damn skimpy of Pete Rose not to offer the public the kind of concocted contrition or phony tears the media and Major League Baseball seem to want. Rose writes in his new book, dramatically titled My Prison Without Bars, "For the last 14 years, I consistently heard the statement, if Pete Rose comes clean, all will be forgiven. Well, I've done what you asked." Sweet, huh? If I were Rose's political adviser, I might have suggested he put it a wee less bluntly. But in the end it doesn't really matter. Sports stars aren't up for election. Rose broke the rules that govern the game--and, more importantly, without which there is no game. No matter how changed a man he is, you can't un-break the rules the same way you can have a change of heart. Sports means never having to say you're sorry, but it doesn't mean you never lose.

Sacha Zimmerman is the assistant managing editor at TNR.

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