Danielle Solzman
Following Monday night’s news that Pete Rose died at 83 years old, baseball fans started mourning him and brought up the inevitable conversation. Rose was Hit King after breaking Ty Cobb’s record and retiring with 4,256 career hits to go along with his 3 batting titles and the 1973 NL MVP Award. His 79.5 career WAR is currently 66th all time. In an ordinary situation, these numbers would guarantee Hall of Fame induction and we wouldn’t be having this debate. But this isn’t an ordinary situation because of Pete Rose being banned by Major League Baseball.
Bob Costas, not surprisingly, has been making the rounds to discuss Rose and the Hall of Fame. Costas is in the broadcasters’ wing, having previously won the Ford C. Frick Award. The veteran broadcaster is one of the go-to voices on TV whenever a baseball legend dies. He appeared this morning on ESPN’s Get Up with Mike Greenberg and delivered the following comments.
“My position and the position of millions of others is, yeah, we get it, he broke the cardinal rule. He should be banned from baseball under that rule for life. But somebody got those 4,256 base hits and those three batting championships.
“Put him in the Hall of Fame. Put it at the bottom of his plaque, ‘Banned from baseball in 1989 for life’ as part of the record. But he should be in as a player. And as you know, Greeny, if you have a slow day on a talk show and you just say, ‘Hey, should Pete Rose be in the Hall of Fame?’ The phones light up. All those decades after he last played, he remains a central figure in the minds of baseball fans. Including baseball fans who never saw him play.”
Rose’s Hall of Fame statistics alone speak for themselves as far as the numbers go. There’s no doubt that his career numbers would have put him in the Hall of Fame but of course, he got placed on baseball’s permanently ineligible list. As we all know, the Hall of Fame later changed the rules and his name was taken off of the BBWAA ballot.
Batting – 64 (19th), Average HOFer ≈ 27
Batting – 239 (35th), Average HOFer ≈ 144
Batting – 311 (15th), Likely HOFer ≈ 100
Batting – 55 (60th), Average HOFer ≈ 50
Left Field (5th):
79.5 career WAR | 44.9 7yr-peak WAR | 62.2 JAWS | 3.6 WAR/162
Average HOF LF (out of 21):
65.1 career WAR | 41.6 7yr-peak WAR | 53.4 JAWS | 4.8 WAR/162
I’m not in the BBWAA but I am an IBWAA voter. I’ve thought long and hard about what I would do if I were given a vote. Much like with the recent steroid users, no, I would not vote to induct Pete Rose into Cooperstown. It goes back to the rules and we saw this in Mark Monroe’s brilliant documentary this past summer. Even with all of baseball’s deals with gambling company’s these days, he broke the rules by betting on baseball. The irony is not lost on me that the regional sports networks carry the Bally name and is expected to be rebranded to FanDuel.
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