PUT PETE ROSE ON THE HALL OF FAME BALLOT!

With everything swirling around now in Major League Baseball, the PEDs, the accusations and how it's hurt this great game... What the hell did Pete Rose do as a player to ban him from baseball for life?  I'll tell you... Nothing.  Pete Rose was one of the hungriest players I've ever seen as a kid. For a short time in the 1970's, I lived in Lexington, Kentucky. I saw the guy play first hand and I wanted to be him.  I loved his grit and dedication to trying to be a better player every single day he was on the field.  Sure, Pete's world of betting on baseball as a manager banned him from baseball for life, I'm not stupid. At the time, it was a big deal.  Now though, as we look around baseball and see this news surrounding PEDs and the harsher fines that baseball is about to hand out...is what Pete Rose did really that bad anymore? Seriously, it's time to move on. Reinstate Pete.  Pete Rose needs to come back to baseball and needs to be put on the ballot. If anything, I think it would represent a new life of the true baseball player... natural and hungry to win.

I know, in the voting, there is a part of it that deals with a player's integrity and character, read HERE.  Honestly, I know for a fact when the subject of Rose being "written in" comes up and the voters see that integrity part, they are less likely to write him in... and I get it, it scares the voters off. But as a player, there was no one better than Pete Rose.

He was a good teammate with the Big Red Machine, a hard nosed athlete with 4256 hits in his career and 3 World championships. There are guys with less that are in the Hall... And you know what? From what I know... He didn't bet on baseball as a player and he didn' t take PEDs either. Take the betting out of the equation.  Pete Rose needs to go on the ballot.

Think about what PEDs has done to this game. These days, kids heroes are cheaters. Our kids are confused. "If cheating is wrong, why is Ryan Braun doing it?" Baseball is a mess right now, and right now, it doesn't feel right.  When Pete Rose was banned from the game, it didn't feel right either, but Rose's sin  didn't impact the game as much as PEDs has. Plus, Rose the player deserves a shot on the ballot. Think about it this way, If Pete Rose never bet on baseball as a manager, he'd be in the hall of fame right now and we wouldn't be writing about this.

I don't know, I just think all this PEDs stuff has really impacted the game in a negative way. Rose's betting didn't impact the game to the capacity that this scandal has, no way!  I mean, for him personally, morally, he was wrong, and he knows that, but he didn't do anything as a player that I didn't appreciate and you can understand where I'm coming from on that.  Rose was a gamer and he did it with what he had, not with what he could take to improve.

Put Pete Rose on the ballot... the time is now.

Read more about this in ENOUGHT'S ENOUGH. TIME FOR PETE ROSE TO GO TO COOPERSTOWN,   

"Think of it this way, the Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire's, the Sammy Sosa's and Rafael Palmeiro's are the guys under a cloud of suspicion for PEDs and we are actually going to figure out how to vote for these guys. Sadly, eventually all of them will go to the Hall of Fame, but Pete never will.  Yup, there have been op-ed's from people smarter than me saying, "How will the writer's vote in the steroid era?", yet God forbid someone says Pete Rose, you quickly hear a "He's banned," and they move on.  Well, let's not move on any longer."

I wrote that last year... and I'm right about this.

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