Every year around this time, we hear about the new inductions to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and then you hear about how Pete Rose deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. He is the last person who ever deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Betting on baseball will cause a manager to manipulate baseball games. It has to. If I was betting, I would. Pete Rose did not bet on every Reds game, and he did not bet the same amount on every game. If he had bet on every game for the entire season, I would actually agree that he did not manipulate games. Whatever the amount, $100,000 a game, the amount does not matter if it was the same every game. But Pete Rose did not do that. He did not bet when Bill Gullickson pitched. Wouldn’t it be ideal for Pete Rose to give players a rest day when Bill Gullickson or Mario Soto pitched? Soto was another pitcher that Pete Rose avoided betting on. It doesn’t even have to be that he gave Eric Davis a day off when those two pitchers pitched it could be that he scheduled days off when he didn’t bet on games, or bet a smaller amount. When it comes to using a closer, it would be human nature not to use Rob Dibble to close a game if you had a big bet on the game the next day. Pete Rose couldn’t have managed each game the same because of his betting. People who want Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame are often the same ones who think players from the steroid era do not belong in the Hall of Fame. I can say this: Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, no matter what they did, always tried to win every game with the same effort. The same can’t be said about Pete Rose.
