by Paul Teetor
Trump is right.
All Ball never thought he would write those three little words — but when Trump is right, he’s right.
I’m talking, of course, about Trump’s crusade to get Pete Rose into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Of course, our reasons for reaching a similar conclusion may not be the same. Trump is all for putting Rose in the HOF because he loves to see a redneck white guy who broke all the rules get away with it. He identifies with Rose, right down to the part about him being persecuted.
All Ball, on the other hand, believes Major League Baseball’s all time hits leader did his time for betting on baseball games – he was banned from baseball from 1989 until he died last year – and that his family at least deserves to see his plaque in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
That plaque should list his statistics – a best-ever 4,256 hits and 17 All-Star selections – along with the reasons for his 35-year ban.
Trump, who played high school baseball at the New York Military Academy, considers himself a baseball expert (among his many, many other areas of self-proclaimed expertise.)
And on this issue, which has been hotly debated in the news media since Rose was reinstated this week by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, Trump has actually been out in front – and deserves props for being right early on.
On February 8, 2020, Trump tweeted: “Pete Rose played Major League Baseball for 24 seasons, from 1963-1986, and had more hits, 4,256, than any other player (by a wide margin). He gambled, but only on his own team winning, and paid a decades long price. GET PETE ROSE INTO THE BASEBALL HALL OF FAME. It’s Time!”
That tweet was lost in the blizzard of pandemic craziness that followed a month later. But Trump tried again when Rose died on September 30, 2024. The following day, Trump took to X to express his feelings on the player.
“The GREAT Pete Rose just died,” he wrote. “He was one of the most magnificent baseball players ever to play the game. He paid the price! Major League Baseball should have allowed him into the Hall of Fame many years ago. Do it now, before his funeral!”
But that tweet also had no effect, so in March he tried again, this time showing a complete lack of self-awareness.
“Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy a [–] and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!”
When Trump’s tweets once again didn’t produce any movement toward re-instating Rose, he met personally with Manfred – never known as a man of strong principles, or strong anything for that matter – two weeks ago.
Voila!
Suddenly Manfred reinstated Rose, thus making him eligible for the Hall of Fame. But it does not assure Rose of entrance into the HOF. That has to be voted on by a special committee, and the vote is not scheduled until September, 2027.
Look for Trump to do everything in his power to move up the vote – to like next month – and to make sure the vote goes the way he wants it to go.
You might even say the vote will be a rigged deal.
Trump didn’t mention this in his tweets, but there’s another good reason Rose should be voted into the Hall of Fame: there are already plenty of villains, scoundrels and wife-beaters in the HOF. Why not one more?
In baseball as in most sports, achievements, which are measurable in cold, hard numbers, far outweigh character, which is mostly intangible and certainly not measurable in numbers.
Consider the case of Ty Cobb, who was widely considered the second-best ballplayer behind Babe Ruth in the pre-World War 2 era. The man was a stone-cold racist, wife beater and violent thug who was credibly accused of murdering a fan but was never convicted.
He once assaulted another fan, a fan with no arms, for jeering him. He attacked a black groundskeeper for attempting to shake his hand and then attempted to strangle the man’s wife when she came to his aid.
For his part, Babe Ruth would show up drunk for games and would bang any semi-attractive woman he could finagle into bed. Or how about all-time great Tris Speaker, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and proud of it.
Looking beneath the surface, there are a host of unsavory characters in the Hall of Fame besides the admitted cheaters and suspected cheaters of bygone times. The great Hank Aaron admitted to using amphetamines – then known as “Greenies.” Players testified under oath that Willie Stargell, another first ballot Hall of Famer, not only took amphetamines but dispensed them to team mates!
The HOF plaque list includes non ballplayers, like Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first MLB commissioner. He restored public faith in the integrity of the game after the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series.
But he was also a drunk and a racist who did everything in his power to keep Black players out of MLB. It was only after he left the commissioner’s office in 1944 that Branch Rickey was able to begin the process that resulted in Jackie Robinson breaking the color line with the Dodgers in 1947.
The Red Sox were so embarrassed by the racist history of former owner and Hall of Famer Tom Yawkey that they changed the name of the street beyond the fence of Fenway Park. But his plaque remains in Cooperstown.
It’s a motley crew that Rose would be joining in the HOF: drunks, drug abusers, racists, wife-beaters and bullies of all kinds.
Trump is right: Rose deserves to be in the Hall of Fame — and the HOF deserves Rose.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com
