Pete Rose RIP

[casimir]

12 minutes ago, Motor City Sonics said:

I have a feeling that in our lifetime we're going to see quite a few managers that never even played the game - the way it's becoming so data-driven.    I can only think of Tony LaRussa right now, but a player-manager?   Too much information to deal with for one person to do both now.    There is no "feel" anymore. .    

I don't know.  There's going to be a need for someone in the dugout to have some sort of "feel" of the game.  Perhaps we on the outside don't recognize that the "feel" might be different than what we've known, or perhaps the "feel" was  somewhat misunderstood in the past.

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, casimir said:

I don't know.  There's going to be a need for someone in the dugout to have some sort of "feel" of the game.  Perhaps we on the outside don't recognize that the "feel" might be different than what we've known, or perhaps the "feel" was  somewhat misunderstood in the past.

And it depends on what one means by 'never played.' There have always been pro coaches who got into coaching - usually after the college game, who never played pro in their sport.

Edited October 1 by gehringer_2

[chasfh]

13 hours ago, tiger2022 said:

Think there will be a push to put him in the Hall of Fame now?

Yes, of course there will be, and it will fail, same as with Joe Jackson.

[chasfh]

13 hours ago, bobrob2004 said:

What's worse is a lot of Cobb's reputation of being an asshole is a lie, made up in order to sell a book.  

Read some contemporary reports about Ty Cobb and get back to us on this.

[chasfh]

11 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

I still think he should be banned, but I feel less strongly about it now given MLB's hypocrisy around gambling.  

I am holding out hope against hope that Baseball will one day abandon their cozy relationship with gambling, same as they did with cigarettes, once it becomes clear that gambling addiction becomes one of the greatest health crises of all time. Not today, or tomorrow, or next year, but perhaps five or ten or fifteen years from now. They won't be able to stop people gambling on games, because Murphy—just as they can't stop people smoking cigarettes while watching baseball. But I am hopeful that one day Baseball (and the other sports) will stop integrating gambling odds and come-ons throughout the product. Please feel free to hammer me now as being hopelessly naive.

[oblong]

1 minute ago, chasfh said:

I am holding out hope against hope that Baseball will one day abandon their cozy relationship with gambling, same as they did with cigarettes, once it becomes clear that gambling addiction becomes one of the greatest health crises of all time. Not today, or tomorrow, or next year, but perhaps five or ten or fifteen years from now. They won't be able to stop people gambling on games, because Murphy—just as they can't stop people smoking cigarettes while watching baseball. But I am hopeful that one day Baseball (and the other sports) will stop integrating gambling odds and come-ons throughout the product. Please feel free to hammer me now as being hopelessly naive.

I'm not sure where I first heard it but the hope is one day we'll look back on gambling and sports like we do when we see old photos, even from the 90's, with a big Marlboro ad in the background on the scoreboard.

 

[RedRamage]

59 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Read some contemporary reports about Ty Cobb and get back to us on this.

https://www.amazon.com/Ty-Cobb-Terrible-Charles-Leerhsen/dp/1451645791/

This is a great read on Ty Cobb where the authors try to get to the source info as much as possible. Their conclusion (if I'm remembering correct, it's been a few years since I read it) is that Ty Cobb, for his era, was not really a stand out. Obviously this doesn't make him a saint, but much of the idea that he was an evil guy who was very racist, very aggressive, hated women, etc. is either greatly exaggerated or straight made up fiction.

 

[Edman85]

1 hour ago, oblong said:

I'm not sure where I first heard it but the hope is one day we'll look back on gambling and sports like we do when we see old photos, even from the 90's, with a big Marlboro ad in the background on the scoreboard.

 

[RatkoVarda]

13 hours ago, CMU97 said:

I don't think we should forget that if he played today, he would never have gotten to 3,000 hits; only won one WS; and would have never managed.  In 1976 when he was 35, he had an affair with a  16 year old. He would have been out of baseball after that, just like Wander Franco, and we would not be having this discussion. And rightfully so.

Great ballplayer,  not a great human. 

she said she was 14 or 15 when Rose started "dating" (raping) her.

rose said she was 16 (age of consent in Ohio) and they only had sex in Ohio (not other states with stricter ages of consent).

just a vile human being.

another less upsetting Pete Rose story: in the 70s, one winter he went to Japan where they were starting to go crazy over baseball. He did some appearances and card shows, and came back to Cincinnati with $10,000 cash in his suitcase. When customs asked him what was going on, he said he wanted to get paid in cash so he did not have to pay taxes. They called his lawyer and he came to the airport and assured them that Rose would declare the $10K and pay taxes.

The next winter, he went back to Japan, did some appearances and card shows, and came back to Cincinnati with another $10,000 cash in his suitcase. When customs asked him what was going on, he said he wanted to get paid in cash so he did not have to pay taxes. Again, they called his lawyer and he came to the airport and assured them that Rose would declare the $10K and pay taxes.

just crazy example of guy who has no intention of playing by the rules, even when he is caught, and the system totally enabled him to break the rules.

[oblong]

The thing with Rose and the rape.... where do we draw the line between the people in our chosen hobbies and their personal life?  Should I quit listening to Led Zeppelin and Elvis and perhaps Don Henly and pretty much every rock star into the 00's....?  Should I never watch Chinatown or The Usual Suspects or the X Men movies?  

Rape of this nature (meaning "consensual" underage sex, I put it in quotes because legally you can't consent if underage) in entertainment was massive and touches a lot of people who's work we love.  

This is not meant to be a rhetorical question and I don't pretend to know the answer.  Just throwing it out there that if someone wants to praise Pete Rose the baseball player and doesn't feel the need to ignore his athletic feats I won't hold it against them because I still listen to Led Zeppelin and all of that other stuff.

 

[gehringer_2]

37 minutes ago, RedRamage said:

for his era, was not really a stand out.

especially by comparison in Det, which was a very racist town. I don't know how  commonly it's remembered that '67 was  the 3rd race riot in Detroit history. There were predecessors in 1863 and 1943. Maybe not quite as bad as Boston with respect to its sports teams but Briggs was certainly a real racist POS.

Edited October 1 by gehringer_2

[oblong]

37 minutes ago, RedRamage said:

https://www.amazon.com/Ty-Cobb-Terrible-Charles-Leerhsen/dp/1451645791/

This is a great read on Ty Cobb where the authors try to get to the source info as much as possible. Their conclusion (if I'm remembering correct, it's been a few years since I read it) is that Ty Cobb, for his era, was not really a stand out. Obviously this doesn't make him a saint, but much of the idea that he was an evil guy who was very racist, very aggressive, hated women, etc. is either greatly exaggerated or straight made up fiction.

 

and in further context... a young man from Georgia... he might have even been considered... progressive?

 

[monkeytargets39]

I’m annoyed that his death is taking focus away from Dikembe Mutombos.  Dikembe did a lot of good with his life.

[bobrob2004]

2 hours ago, chasfh said:

Read some contemporary reports about Ty Cobb and get back to us on this.

I know he was an asshole.  Just a lot of it was made up, exaggerated.  I never said he was a saint. 

[bobrob2004]

36 minutes ago, oblong said:

and in further context... a young man from Georgia... he might have even been considered... progressive?

 

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/who-was-ty-cobb-the-history-we-know-thats-wrong/

Quote

Cobb himself was never asked about segregation until 1952, when the Texas League was integrating, and Sporting News asked him what he thought. “The Negro should be accepted wholeheartedly, and not grudgingly,” he said. “The Negro has the right to play professional baseball and whose [sic] to say he has not?” By that time he had attended many Negro league games, sometimes throwing out the first ball and often sitting in the dugout with the players. He is quoted as saying that Willie Mays was the only modern-day player he’d pay to see and that Roy Campanella was the ballplayer that reminded him most of himself.

 

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, RedRamage said:

https://www.amazon.com/Ty-Cobb-Terrible-Charles-Leerhsen/dp/1451645791/

This is a great read on Ty Cobb where the authors try to get to the source info as much as possible. Their conclusion (if I'm remembering correct, it's been a few years since I read it) is that Ty Cobb, for his era, was not really a stand out. Obviously this doesn't make him a saint, but much of the idea that he was an evil guy who was very racist, very aggressive, hated women, etc. is either greatly exaggerated or straight made up fiction.

 

Yes, we talked about this on the other board when he book came out. Here is where I came out on that.

The book is a pretty good read, and I think it would make a good movie. But Leersehn did not do a solid job at proving that Ty Cobb was significantly different from how he'd been portrayed a century previously. He did confirm that Cobb was combative and likely to fight at the drop of a hat other some perceived slight. This was not uncommon at the time, especially among southerners, who live in a culture defined by honor and, more to the point, the defending of it against all slights, large and small.

But Leersehn does not do a good job at proving Ty Cobb was not racist, which was the author's greatest claim while promoting the book. He took situations and quotes involving Cobb's father and took leaps to conclude that he was a man who wanted to see blacks and whites on equal footing in terms of opportunities to succeed and under the law, but did not deliver any quotes or citations affirming this was the case. Leersehn drew his own conclusion, and worse yet, wrote it up so that it read as though it was merely his own conclusion.

Likewise with Cobb's own behavior, such as fights with black people, the author disregarded actual newspaper accounts in the Free Press which, at the time, reported straight up that as a southern man Cobb had a natural disinclination towards blacks which likely led to the fights. The author cited the Free Press's own racism in its general reporting about blacks, as though the paper was seeking to implicate Ty Cobb as a racist due only to his southern roots. Point being, the conclusion that Ty Cobb is simply not the racist everything thinks he is is based on nothing but the author's own conjecture, given without citations of confirming evidence, and to the point of contradicting the actual reporting of the time when it suits him to.

In short, the author comes off a Ty Cobb apologist who is doing everything he can to exonerate Cobb's reputation.

All that said, I do recommend the book. It's a fun read, and again, I think it would make a fun movie to watch.

[chasfh]

56 minutes ago, oblong said:

The thing with Rose and the rape.... where do we draw the line between the people in our chosen hobbies and their personal life?  Should I quit listening to Led Zeppelin and Elvis and perhaps Don Henly and pretty much every rock star into the 00's....?  Should I never watch Chinatown or The Usual Suspects or the X Men movies?  

Rape of this nature (meaning "consensual" underage sex, I put it in quotes because legally you can't consent if underage) in entertainment was massive and touches a lot of people who's work we love.  

This is not meant to be a rhetorical question and I don't pretend to know the answer.  Just throwing it out there that if someone wants to praise Pete Rose the baseball player and doesn't feel the need to ignore his athletic feats I won't hold it against them because I still listen to Led Zeppelin and all of that other stuff.

 

I do not give much thought to Pete Rose and his hankering for underage girls for the same reason you mention: history is replete with characters, some of whom are the most celebrated people in history, who imposed themselves sexually on minor children. Thomas Jefferson, for example, start raping his enslaved concubine Sally Hemings when she was 14.

The difference between Pete Rose and most of those other characters is that Rose committed the #1 mortal sin against his profession, the sin of undermining the integrity of competition by betting on games in which he had a duty to perform. This would be the rough equivalent of Thomas Jefferson committing a treasonous act against the United States. In that case, you wouldn't have to highlight the child rape at all, as it is irrelevant to the issue at hand. The treason would be enough.

And so it is with Pete Rose: his treason against baseball is all that is needed to exile him into the wilderness forever.

 

[chasfh]

27 minutes ago, bobrob2004 said:

I know he was an asshole.  Just a lot of it was made up, exaggerated.  I never said he was a saint. 

Says who? Says Leersehn, a guy who sold a million copies of a book based on the exact premise that basically everything we knew about Cobb was made up?

[oblong]

23 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I do not give much thought to Pete Rose and his hankering for underage girls for the same reason you mention: history is replete with characters, some of whom are the most celebrated people in history, who imposed themselves sexually on minor children. Thomas Jefferson, for example, start raping his enslaved concubine Sally Hemings when she was 14.

The difference between Pete Rose and most of those other characters is that Rose committed the #1 mortal sin against his profession, the sin of undermining the integrity of competition by betting on games in which he had a duty to perform. This would be the rough equivalent of Thomas Jefferson committing a treasonous act against the United States. In that case, you wouldn't have to highlight the child rape at all, as it is irrelevant to the issue at hand. The treason would be enough.

And so it is with Pete Rose: his treason against baseball is all that is needed to exile him into the wilderness forever.

 

agree.  All of my bashing on Pete is centered around his gambling on baseball and the reds and his lack of contrition and remorse and repeated denials. I don't think about the other stuff.  Not dismissing it but I don't have the energy or desire to litigate every famous athlete or entertainer's behavior.  

[Shades of Deivi Cruz]

When I was young, my dad would take me to a lot of baseball card shows for autographs. One of my friends was a huge Reds (and hence Pete Rose) fan, so we got tickets and went to the card show. Every other show I've ever been to the player would at least look up and acknowledge you when you got to the table. Not Rose. Head down, signing and on to the next, as fast as he could. My friend tried to say something to him about being a huge fan, and got no response whatsoever. Not even a glance up or a nod.

Pales in comparison to all of the other "bad guy" stories about Rose, I know.

[Tiger337]

3 hours ago, chasfh said:

I am holding out hope against hope that Baseball will one day abandon their cozy relationship with gambling, same as they did with cigarettes, once it becomes clear that gambling addiction becomes one of the greatest health crises of all time. Not today, or tomorrow, or next year, but perhaps five or ten or fifteen years from now. They won't be able to stop people gambling on games, because Murphy—just as they can't stop people smoking cigarettes while watching baseball. But I am hopeful that one day Baseball (and the other sports) will stop integrating gambling odds and come-ons throughout the product. Please feel free to hammer me now as being hopelessly naive.

There is little doubt that the casual attitude professional sports have towards gambling is going to contribute to more addictions.  How the leagues respond to it I am not sure.  Gambling addictions are not like opioid addictions which lead to deaths.  Gambling addictions tend to lead to destruction of individuals and familes without usually having a countable death outcome.   

[RedRamage]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Yes, we talked about this on the other board when he book came out. Here is where I came out on that.

The book is a pretty good read, and I think it would make a good movie. But Leersehn did not do a solid job at proving that Ty Cobb was significantly different from how he'd been portrayed a century previously. He did confirm that Cobb was combative and likely to fight at the drop of a hat other some perceived slight. This was not uncommon at the time, especially among southerners, who live in a culture defined by honor and, more to the point, the defending of it against all slights, large and small.

But Leersehn does not do a good job at proving Ty Cobb was not racist, which was the author's greatest claim while promoting the book. He took situations and quotes involving Cobb's father and took leaps to conclude that he was a man who wanted to see blacks and whites on equal footing in terms of opportunities to succeed and under the law, but did not deliver any quotes or citations affirming this was the case. Leersehn drew his own conclusion, and worse yet, wrote it up so that it read as though it was merely his own conclusion.

Likewise with Cobb's own behavior, such as fights with black people, the author disregarded actual newspaper accounts in the Free Press which, at the time, reported straight up that as a southern man Cobb had a natural disinclination towards blacks which likely led to the fights. The author cited the Free Press's own racism in its general reporting about blacks, as though the paper was seeking to implicate Ty Cobb as a racist due only to his southern roots. Point being, the conclusion that Ty Cobb is simply not the racist everything thinks he is is based on nothing but the author's own conjecture, given without citations of confirming evidence, and to the point of contradicting the actual reporting of the time when it suits him to.

In short, the author comes off a Ty Cobb apologist who is doing everything he can to exonerate Cobb's reputation.

All that said, I do recommend the book. It's a fun read, and again, I think it would make a fun movie to watch.

Now I'm gonna have to re-read it sometime soon... 

My basic take away was that Cobb was, more or less, about what the average southern man of the era was like... which includes being prejudice/racist to some level. This doesn't make Cobb a saint of course, but the perception that he was MORE aggressive than, or MORE racist than, or MORE sexist than your average baseball player of the era is probably wrong.

I don't think the author was trying to paint Cobb as perfect, but just not the extremist that he's been viewed as via the work of Stump. I believe that his showing of the Freep being racist is showing what culture was like at that time. I think the author pointing how some of the stories were inaccurate (the one example being the fight Cobb got into with an elevator operator and with a watchman at a hotel NOT being black men, but instead being white men) shows how Stump created a false narrative.

All in all Cobb was almost certainly racist/prejudice to some level and simply saying: "Well, so was everyone" isn't really a vindication. I'm repeating myself here, but I'm not saying Cobb was a great morally upstanding man who we should honor and respect and elevate as a wonderful human. I am saying that probably any sports figure from the era had as much questionable about them as Cobb so if someone wants to shy away from being a fan of Cobb because he was [x] or he was [y] then I would expect them to behave the same way about nearly everyone from this era. 

(Just to be 100% clear: I am NOT saying you are acting that way towards Cobb while not towards other players of the era.)

[1776]

A former Jacksonville Jaguars employee who embezzled more than $22 million from the team is suing FanDuel, alleging that the betting company fueled his fantasy-sports spending and ignored his gambling addiction. 

Amit Patel, who is serving a six-and-a-half-month federal prison term after pleading guilty to stealing money from the team, claimed in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that a FanDuel VIP host showered him with more than $1 million in betting credits, all-expenses-paid trips and gifts to prey on him. He is seeking $250 million in damages.

[oblong]

I don't know how much success he'll have but I like that this is being pushed and we can get some heat on the league's association with gambling.  

[Tiger337]

3 hours ago, RatkoVarda said:

she said she was 14 or 15 when Rose started "dating" (raping) her.

rose said she was 16 (age of consent in Ohio) and they only had sex in Ohio (not other states with stricter ages of consent).

just a vile human being.

another less upsetting Pete Rose story: in the 70s, one winter he went to Japan where they were starting to go crazy over baseball. He did some appearances and card shows, and came back to Cincinnati with $10,000 cash in his suitcase. When customs asked him what was going on, he said he wanted to get paid in cash so he did not have to pay taxes. They called his lawyer and he came to the airport and assured them that Rose would declare the $10K and pay taxes.

The next winter, he went back to Japan, did some appearances and card shows, and came back to Cincinnati with another $10,000 cash in his suitcase. When customs asked him what was going on, he said he wanted to get paid in cash so he did not have to pay taxes. Again, they called his lawyer and he came to the airport and assured them that Rose would declare the $10K and pay taxes.

just crazy example of guy who has no intention of playing by the rules, even when he is caught, and the system totally enabled him to break the rules.

He sounds like someone we constantly talk abut in another forum.