Let me say outright what I only suggested when writing of it elsewhere shortly after it came to pass. Anyone who thinks baseball commissioner Rob Manfred let the late Pete Rose return to baseball standing without an arm-twisting threat from the president who threatened in March to pardon Rose, should be sent exclusive advance invitations . . . to the Great Pumpkin's Halloween Ball.
For a decade, Manfred sat resolute that Rose wouldn't be reinstated. No matter what. For a decade, whatever else he said, did, or shepherded that was suspect or staining, Manfred wouldn't and didn't let Rose cajole, strong-arm, beg, plead, or threaten his way into reinstatement. Neither Rose nor his partisans could get Manfred to budge.
Even when a Rose family attorney wrote him in January, Manfred didn't take the missive as a demand, just a request. It took a witless president thundering beyond his competence, six month after Rose's death at 83, to shove Manfred into telling the Rose family attorney, that it now depends on what your definition of "permanent" is. And Manfred's is that "permanent" now ends upon one's transition from earthly life to the Elysian Fields.
A president who thinks nothing of using his pardon power to undermine rather than accent the rule of law isn't a president who'd shy from demanding a professional sport that's technically a private business re-hire someone who broke its most sacred rule. (Trump's presidential pardon power covers only Rose's ancient tax evasion conviction. He has no power to overturn what's technically a private business's personnel matters.)
But then that sport's commissioner proved so unwilling, apparently, to stand up on his hind legs and retort, "Mr. President, with all due respect, you are talking beyond your competence."
You want to talk about timing? The news of Manfred's proclaiming "permanent" ends upon death broke the day before the Reds held a Pete Rose Night at Great American Ball Park. As The Athletic's C. Trent Rosecrans pointed out, it wasn't exactly the first time the Reds had such a celebration for their most famous and, shall we say, controversial player and manager.
But it might have been the most dismaying. Not just because of Rose's recent death, not just because of Trump's arm-twisting Manfred, not just because of Manfred's re-defining "permanent."
"In Pete, we saw an embodiment of Cincinnati," Rosecrans cited Great American public address voice Joe Zerhusen saying during a video highlighting the best of Rose. "In Pete, we saw ourselves."
That's not exactly a self-review Cincinnatians should wish. Hall of Famer Barry Larkin, a career-long Red, broke in with Rose as his manager. Larkin is also a native Cincinnatian. He remembered Rose "talk[ing] to me about the responsibilities of being a Cincinnatian and representing the city." To the best of anyone's knowledge, Larkin played a scandal-free career and has lived a scandal-free life since retiring from baseball.
Maybe it depends on what your definition of Cincinnati is. Maybe Cincinnati learned to develop one set of rules for Rose because it couldn't stand the thought that its most fabled native son proved to be just as his best biographer, Keith O'Brien, sketched. "He was Icarus in red stirrup socks and cleats," O'Brien wrote in Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball. "He was the American dream sliding headfirst into third. He was both a miracle and a disaster, and he still is today."
"You could definitely feel the love that Cincinnati had for Pete and the way he played the game," said Nick Lodolo, the Reds' starting pitcher on the latest Pete Rose Night. (The Reds lost to the White Sox, 4-2.)
Lodolo could only mean baseball between the lines. He couldn't possibly mean the years and years and years of lying through his teeth about the Rule 21(d) violations that got Rose purged from MLB standing and blocked from appearing on Hall of Fame ballots — unless telling a piece of the truth could help Rose sell books. He couldn't possibly mean the Rose-ian codicil, "I only bet on my team to win," unless he's never read the text of Rule 21(d) that does. not. distinguish. between betting for or against your team. He couldn't possibly mean the absolute nadir of Rose's womanizing ways, the spring training affair he had with a girl who turned out short of the legal age of consent.
Reds president Phil Castellini said Pete Rose Night was just a warmup for "the real party" at the Hall of Fame. Not so fast. It'll still take the Hall's Historical Overview Committee to choose whether to place Rose on the Classic Baseball Era Committee's next ballot — for late 2027.
There's still time, in other words, for the Hall of Fame to decide whether Trump's apparent (and willfully ignorant) strong-arming of Commissioner Pepperwinkle passes the proverbial smell test.
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