Wednesday Whatnot: The Great Debate

About four months ago, the House of Georges celebrated two years of existence. It was no big deal. We didn't send out invites, hire a clown, or bake any cakes. The date was more so a note upon which the three of us -- aptly named the Iron Triangle -- could sit back and think, Have we really been cranking out these posts for 24 months? The ones we stress and argue over? The ones hardly anyone reads? Yes, indeed, we had. A funny thing happened a few months in, however, and I'd like to share it with you now. Right here. Today. It can be summed up in one succinct word: obsession.

What I mean is, I really, really liked what we were doing. I loved posting. I pored with hunger pangs of verbiage over every word my colleagues wrote. I digressed, frantically trying to devour every word published on the blogosphere. I petitioned other established bloggers for link exchanges. I fumbled hopelessly with teaching myself codes and HTML. I procrastinated on every graduate-school assignment I had. I barely saw my fiancee, and I neglected my then senior citizen dog. I wanted to expand, build a network of blogs, and my first idea...

...had something to do with Andy Dufresne from "The Shawshank Redemption." It had quite a bit to do with dedication, and a lot to do with Pete Rose. I called it Letters to Bud. Dufresne wanted a library for the prison in the movie. He wrote to politicians once a week for some two to five years until they just quit ignoring him, and they unloaded money for building and books for shelving upon him, and the Shawshank Library was a dream no more.

I wanted the lifetime ban from baseball cast upon Rose -- to which he agreed -- by Major League Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti lifted. Let's just say I got my signals a little crossed. For starters, I dove into this vanity side project thinking of it as a team effort. I made phone calls. I sent e-mails. I texted. I thought we were in like the proverbial, only when I pronounced that we were "going streaking" straight to the 31st floor of Park Avenue in New York, I looked behind me and I was the only naked dude inquiring about KFC's hours of operation. The other miswiring was that I incorrectly remembered that Dufresne wrote a letter a day to see his goal through. Mind you, I not only posted these letters on the aforelinked GoreNets, I actually printed a hard copy, signed it with my real name, stamped an envelope, and sent those little scrolls to my pen pal Bud.

And mind you, I got married, moved into a new house, and honeymooned a mere two months prior. Weird thing is, the wife was on board with the thing. My in-laws were like, "Go, son. You write your letters." Or something. People started asking me when I'd get to work what today's letter was about. And the thing took off. I had a head of steam about me with the gig. Cecil said I was nuts but to go for it. Old No. 7 envisioned Selig interns and a famous press conference, all resulting in a House of Georges hookers-and-cocaine party. So I ran with it. For 44 days.

I truly was in over my head thinking that I could keep it and the House of Georges contributions rolling, and work, and sleep, and be a husband. And drink heavily. I was drinking fairly heavily then, so the ol' early-bird-knocks-out-the-posts mantra, uh, didn't exist. It was fun, though. I don't regret it one bit. If I can say two things about it, they are that I tried, and I was sincere. But then I started getting into the Dowd report. I was researching old USA Today articles. I was purchasing literature on the guy. My wife was still on board, but she didn't care for the fact that I was basically filling the trash can with toner cartridges like boogers into a morning Kleenex, and them things ain't cheap. I hit a point where I was studying too much to have time to post, and the wheels came off.

Since then, Rose's name has come up inside the House of Georges a time or two. I stumble across something, I'll link to it, or write about it. My feelings about the ban haven't changed, and to be honest, it kind of took me by surprise the other day when I discovered that the 20-year anniversary of the ban was approaching. I couldn't believe it. I thought, What if I'd kept the Letters to Bud going out? Would it have made a difference? And then some chatter arose about the whole deal. Hank Aaron came out and endorsed Rose. Folks scooted to the edge of their seats. Bloggers came out of their moms' basements (in their underwear) to see if there was anything in the papers. The SportsTalk Radios buzzed. Finally, Selig came out of his wormhole like the cops at a high school party:

"Go on home, you damn kids," nobody quoted him saying. "Take your damn Hamm's and your hip-hop with you, and stay the hell offa my lawn."

And things fizzled.

I was informed this morning, however, about this blog, which I've never read before today, and about this post, which Craig Calcaterra wrote on Monday. It's sort of about Mike Schmidt coming out and saying, in not so many words, that "20 years is enough punishment. Let's lift the ban." But mostly about the author of the post disagreeing with that sentiment by saying, "The headline to Schmidt's piece asks if 20 years is enough. My answer: no, not really."

Now mind you, I'd never read this Calcaterra cat prior to today, and mind you, I never will again. For my money, he's a gosh-darned buffoon. The post, however, was heavily commented upon, and so today, he offered this post, which revisits his post from two days ago, and offers new(ish) insight, provided by none other than our own Old No. 7. In a nutshell, Seven, in his assessment of our recent Hitters feature, took, as he is prone to do, every opportunity to belittle Rose, and make him look like a child molester. Kinda. Calcaterra, buffoon that he is, loved it, and linked to our feature. Picture, if you will, buck-toothed Mike Shanhan, on the sidelines, proclaiming to a horse-faced John Elway, "I'm so proud of you." Oh glorious day.

So if my colleage and his new best pal are the Dark Side in the battle of the Rose Force, I've got myself and my homey Joe Posnanski bringing up Team Good. Some excerpts from the piece:

"Here it is, 20 years after he agreed to a lifetime suspension for gambling on baseball (and, he would finally admit, his own team), and the debate about him is as raw as it ever was. Screaming. Insults. Good journalists such as ESPN's Buster Olney will call Rose 'nothing less than a lowlife,' and excellent writers such as Fox's Mark Kriegel will call him a 'skell' -- which seems awfully harsh. It isn't like Rose mugged people. As far as I know, he hasn't killed anybody or kidnapped anybody or betrayed his nation or bilked senior citizens out of their social security. He bet on his team. He lied about it."

"While writing my book The Machine about the 1975 Cincinnati Reds, excerpted in this week's Sports Illustrated, I was astonished that virtually every player on that team shared a story about the time that Rose said a few kind words when they were in a slump, or the time Rose picked up their check when they weren't making any money, or the time Rose invited them to his house for dinner. Will McEnaney remembers Rose giving him shoes. Gary Nolan remembers Rose believing in him when he was hurting. Joe Morgan remembers Rose pushing him and inspiring him into becoming the Hall of Fame player he became. Ken Griffey remembers Rose being a guy who treated him with respect from the start."

"So how do we get beyond all that and discuss one of the most talked about baseball questions of the last two decades: Should Pete Rose be in the Hall of Fame? I think the question needs the word 'should,' not 'will,' in it, because honestly I don't think he will get in. For Rose to get inducted into the Hall of Fame, two basic things would have to happen:...One, he would need to be reinstated somehow...Two -- even if he WAS reinstated, he would need 75 percent approval from either the Baseball Writers Association of America or the Veteran's Committee (made up of living Hall of Famers)."

From here Posnanski cites but a few of the hundreds of things that have been said against Rose, reasons for keeping the ban in place, reasons for making sure that you, the American public, the lover of baseball, the model of good-versus-evil for any and all children to learn from, understand that Rose committed baseball's cardinal sin.

"And so it goes ... this has been repeated so many times that people have simply come to accept it as undeniable fact. Betting on baseball is the cardinal sin.

Only ... it isn't. Or anyway, nobody REALLY BELIEVES what Pete Rose did is baseball's cardinal sin. If we are using 'cardinal sin' to mean the worst possible thing a baseball player can do or, to be more precise, 'the sin that condemns a person's soul to eternal Hell,' well, I can think of about 200 things you can do on a baseball field worse than gamble on a game."

"But the real point is this: Even under the gambling umbrella, what Pete Rose did is not even CLOSE to baseball's cardinal sin. I would think that taking a large sum of money from gamblers and then purposely playing lousy enough that your team will lose the World Series, yes, THAT might be called baseball's cardinal sin. Nobody suggests Pete Rose did that. Betting on your team to lose and then going 0-for-5 in a playoff game and committing an error with the winning run on third, yes, THAT might be baseball's cardinal sin. Nobody suggests Pete Rose did that either. Purposely performing poorly on the field during a regular season game in order to cash in on bets, yes, even that might be baseball's cardinal sin. Nobody suggest Pete Rose did that either.

Seems to me the cardinal sin would be to AFFECT THE OUTCOME OF GAMES in order to profit on it -- either by gambling yourself or taking money from gamblers.

What Pete Rose DID do -- or at least what we KNOW he did -- is bet on the Cincinnati Reds to win while he was manager of the team. Did he do more? Maybe. But this is what we know and the Dowd Report is clear in saying "No evidence was discovered that Rose bet against the Cincinnati Reds." In 20 years of digging and pinching you would think that if Rose indeed bet against the Reds at any point it would have come out. All you can know is what you know. I think it's probably fair to say that Rose bet on his team to win."

He mentions a series of polls that were up on his blog a few months ago, results from which he deduces that "many of us are good at being against the CONCEPT of gambling on baseball, but not so sure of ourselves when it comes to the particulars."

And finally:

"And there's something about forgiveness in here too. One thing you hear people say is that Pete Rose hasn't EARNED our forgiveness. It's hard to argue the point. Over the last 20 years, he has been brash and dishonest and indiscreet and arrogant. But there's something else. Pete Rose made a lot of people happy playing baseball. He inspired a lot of people to try harder. He cracked more hits than anyone who ever played the game. And anyway, I didn't think forgiveness was supposed to be earned. I thought forgiveness was supposed to be given. I thought that was the whole point."

I'm not about to get on a number-14 soap box here. I've done that once before. I was up there for 44 days, and I, too, think about the notion of foregiveness.
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Historically Speaking: 20 Years Since Rose's Ban

What you'll find after the jump are some sports tidbits. How is that different than any other installment of this feature? Why, it's not.

* We're talking 1908, this date, Tommy Burns, and Bill Squires. The two climbed into the ring for a heavyweight title fight, a rematch, in Sydney. Thirteen rounds later, Burns had knocked out Squires, his 10th straight title defense since taking the belt from Marvin Hart two years prior. In their first fight, which took place two months prior in Paris, Burns downed Squires in eight.

* Bill Veeck, one-time owner of the Philadelphia Phillies, Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns, and Chicago White Sox, had a wooden leg that he sometimes used as an ashtray, which, if you smoke three-four packs of cigarettes a day, probably comes in handy. Veeck, nonetheless, was famous for his publicity stunts, including one that took place on this day in 1951. He called it "Fans Managers' Night," in which 1000 fans behind the Browns' dugout were given cards with either 'yes' or 'no' written on them, and they could vote on decisions made by the St. Louis coaching staff. Whether they had an impact or not, the Browns defeated Philadelphia 5-3.

* Today in 1972, Gordie Howe and Jean Beliveau were inducted into Hockey's Hall of Fame. After 20 seasons in a Montreal Canadiens sweater, Beliveau retired with 507 goals, 712 assists, and a staggering 10 Stanley Cup championships. He also went to 13 All-Star games, won an Art Ross, a Conn Smythe, and two Hart Memorials. Howe tallied 801 goals, 1,049 assists, and nearly 1700 PIMs. He won four Cups with Detroit, played in 23 All-Star games, won six Hart Memorials, and six Art Rosses. For most of the 1950s, he led the league in games played, and frequently led, or was second, in goals and assists.

* Kansas City Royal catcher John Wathan stole his 31st base today in 1982, which broke the record for steals by a catcher set by Ray Schalk in 1916. Wathan wrapped up the season with 36 swipes.

It was on this day in 1989 that Major League Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti suspended Pete Rose from baseball for life. The fat piece of shit offered these words in doing so:

"The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is the sad end of a
sorry episode. One of the game's greatest players has engaged in a variety of
acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of
those acts. By choosing not to come to a hearing before me, and by choosing not
to proffer any testimony or evidence contrary to the evidence and information
contained in the report of the Special Counsel to the Commissioner, Mr. Rose has
accepted baseball's ultimate sanction, lifetime ineligibility."

And your Sports Illustrated quote of the day came from the mouth of...



...Major League Baseball manager Joe Torre, who, in 1996, was skipping the New York Yankees and had an infant daughter. Torre was asked if nighttime feedings disturb his sleep, to which he replied, "I'm 55 years old. I get up three times a night to go to the bathroom. the baby is on my schedule."
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Baseball Bits For A Monday Morning Afternoon

There's no day baseball to fill the afternoon, but we're drawn to the game nonetheless. The trade deadline is in four days, the extra-special super-secret Roy Halladay Deadline is tomorrow, and a few swaps have already been consummated. Some big important series, vital homestands and gruelling road trips kick off tonight. And, on top of all that, we inducted a new class into the Baseball Hall Of Fame yesterday, a class that did not include either Pete Rose or any infamous steroid users. Yet all anyone in Cooperstown could talk about were Pete Rose and infamous steroid users.

Back in the day, they used to schedule the Hall Of Fame Game on this very Monday afternoon, at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown. That would have meant the A's and the Red Sox, the clubs most associated with newly minted inductees Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice, would have been forced to travel to a sleepy hamlet in upstate New York for a pseudo-exhibition in the middle of a pennant race. That was a hassle, I agree. But the A's and the Red Sox are already playing tonight, as luck would have it, at Fenway. We couldn't have played that game in daylight? Pricks.

Join us, you nocturnal baseball vampires, after the jump...

If you haven't seen Rickey's speech, please watch, it's timeless. I knew Rick was a kook and took some, um, serious liberties with the English language. Until yesterday, however, I had no ideas that he was physically incapable of pronouncing words that end in the letter S. "I was called up to the major, to play for the Oakland A." At first, I wondered if this is some kind of a condition, like Tourette's or bedwetting. But Rickey's presentation was so thoughtful, so funny and so...Rickey that I am now convinced he has created his own dialect on purpose. If Cormac McCarthy can write entire novels without using punctuation and be considered a literary genius, Rickey should be applauded for creating a world all his own.

The staff of the House of Georges conducted a series of online drafts this weekend, selecting topics for an upcoming series where we'll list our Top 25 of the last 25 years in a variety of categories. The details are unimportant, trust me, if you read this blog you will hear A LOT about this draft in the coming weeks. Let me just say that I had the pleasure of taking Rickey among my Top 25 hitters, and his numbers are just insane. Even my wife, who's not exactly the hugest stat freak you've ever met, did a double-take when she heard that Rickey stole 130 bases in 1982. "That's almost one a game!" she exclaimed.

Speaking of baseball conversations with the wives, this one at Shysterball made me LOL my ass off.

Hank Aaron is one of the most respected figures in the game, and his opinion carries a lot of weight. Unfortunately, a lot of people jerk Hank Aaron around and cash in on his credibility. Bud Selig went on Mike and Mike a few weeks back and defended his moronic scheme to tie winning the All-Star Game with home field in the World Series, and he said that because Aaron and Ron Santo told him the ASG had lost intensity from their day, he had to make the move in order to restore the game's spark. Bud Selig blamed his crackpot idea on Hank Aaron, only one of the ten best baseball players of all time. God I hate Bud Selig.

But back to Hank--he gave an interview over the weekend that raised a few eyebrows. he said that Rose should get in, and he said that juicers should too, with an asterisk on their plaques. I applaud Aaron for this on many levels. One is that he's right--Rose, Bonds, Manny and Rocket are among the greatest to ever play the game and deserve enshrinement. Two, just because you grant someone entry into the Hall of Fame doesn't mean you're calling them perfect people. Everyone knows that Reggie Jackson struck out more than anyone else in history, that Nolan Ryan issued more walks, hit more batters and permitted more stolen bases than any other pitcher, and that Ty Cobb left a trail of murdered people across the American South. Still Hall of Famers.

But mostly, I applaud Hank Aaron for speaking rationally on the subject, because if Bud Selig and the baseball writers follow his advice Hank Aaron will lose a significant amount of money. Keep that in mind whenever you hear Joe Morgan, Goose Gossage or any other sanctimonious douchebag HoFer opine on the Hall-worthiness of modern players--the more guys they keep out the more cash they keep from merchandising and card shows. It ain't all about the purity of the game or of the shrine in Cooperstown.

On the actual field of play, the Red Sox are dropping in the standings like a stone while the Yankees never lose. Luckily for Boston, they get four games at home against the sad-sack A's while new York heads to Tampa for a three-game set. The Yanks currently lead the AL East by 2 1/2 over the Sox and 6 1/2 over the Bay-Rays, while Boston leads the wild card by 2 1/2 over the Rangers.

So much for Mark Buehrle's perfect game getting the White Sox back into it--the day after the gem Chicago showed up in Detroit for four and promptly dropped the first three games. This took them from a divisional tie to three games out, and although the Pale Hose won last night to draw within two of the Tigers, we're all reminded of the fact that the White Sox aren't very good. Detroit's not either, but they will win this division barring a major collapse or unconscious run by someone else (hello, Minnesota).

I'm still saying that the NL East and West are decided, and that Philly and LA can start booking hotels for October. Stuck in the middle is St. Louis, who saw their Central lead evaporate over the weekend. The Cards dropped two of three to the Phils and today welcome the Dodgers to Busch for four more. Getting Matt Holliday was a major coup for St. Louis, and if they can keep Chris Carpenter healthy they have a major leg up should they make the playoffs. The one-two punch of Carpenter-Adam Wainwright is unmatched in the NL, unless Philadelphia or LA ends up with Roy Halladay.

In the NL wild card, Colorado dispatched the Giants yesterday to win their series and open up a two-game lead over the G-Men. After ceding first place in the Central to the red-hot Cubs, the Cardinals sit 2 1/2 back. The Rockies embark on their toughest and most crucial stretch of the season tonight as they start a four-game set with the Mets in Queens. Then they head to Cincinnati and Philly before coming home to battle the Cubs. Can Colorado's remarkable starting pitching hold up? Can their bullpen continue to get key outs with no-namers and minor-leaguers? Will Carlos Gonzales figure out how to hit, thus making the lineup completely unstoppable? I don't have these answers, folks, if I did I'd have a job writing for a seldom-read sports blog whose rough focus was the rivalry between the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs. Enjoy your week.

UPDATE: Our Smart Guy of the Day award goes to this dude at Wrigley. Thanks to Neyer for the link.
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