Kirby Puckett thoroughly enjoyed the occasional sexual battery

I’m sure that’s why it happened. His thorough enjoyment of it. This also has nothing to do with baseball.

Frankly, if you can only point to ‘b-b-b-but there’s a rule, he broke the rule’, your being simple.

I like that I’m stuttering clumsily because of my utter inability to contend here. Good re-enactment.

I made other arguments but you come back to this one because it’s easy. So I’m glad you’re “done with this,” because so am I. You’re taking every easy way out of everything and going back to the fact that you think Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame because outside-of-sports shitheads are in. If you think Pete Rose should be in, you’re not alone and I don’t mind. Pete Rose is not something I lose sleep over and I doubt you do either.

But you’re going “That’s stupid!” over and over with simplified interpretations of the things I’m saying because that makes me wrong instead of having a legitimate respect for the rule that I THINK EXISTS FOR A VERY GOOD REASON. You don’t like the rule. That is really all we’re arguing about. I’ve tried to discuss why I think it’s a valid and important rule to have (and thus why I think Rose should go F himself about the Hall of Fame, and yes my personal feeling that he’s a giant lying baby does affect that). If I missed the black-and-white statement of “betting on baseball while you’re in baseball is a problem that stains the game,” then there, I said that now.

But yes I’m only in love with rules. You’re pointing your arguments at a version of me that does not really exist, dude.

And again I’m sorry if I’m coming off as a prick, because I think you’re an awesome contributor and there’s an acceptable argument re: Rose in the Hall, which of course is off-topic but is a fun hot button discussion. If he got in I wouldn’t start an online petition, let’s put it that way.

It’s a matter of enforcing the rule. The punishment was known before he did what he did, and he clearly violated the rule. If you make exceptions, especially for flagrant offenders like Rose, then it really eliminates the effect of the rule.

Also, I’m of the opinion that betting on your own sport at all hurts that sport’s integrity. There’s a slippery slope here, and we’re starting to see it in the ATP. Gamblers get close to the clubhouse and racketeers get close to the clubhouse, and pretty soon you don’t know what’s real and what’s fixed. Also, as mentioned, trying too hard to win in baseball can seriously hurt a team over the long-term. There’s a reason it’s illegal in pretty much every sport, and the sports where it’s not illegal (to my knowledge, only boxing and sumo) there are far more allegations of corruption and fixed matches than sports where it’s not allowed.

Of course, Pete Rose can’t have been trying to win too hard if he kept playing himself when he was in his mid-40’s. zing

I’m from Philly, and I have really good memories of Rose. But Charlie Hustle dug his own grave on this one. Like a lot of gamblin’ men, his addiction to the action ate him up to the point where he was eventually going to cross the line. And he did. He bet on baseball, and it was wrong, and doing it flushed his guaranteed HOF status straight down the poop hole. It wasn’t comparable to murder or all these other things that are being tossed around, put being kept out of a private museum isn’t exactly like sitting on death row either. Worse things happen in the world all the time to better people, and better things happen all the time to worse people.

But the fact is, this argument will be rehashed long after Rose is dead, and guys who never even saw him play will probably describe him as “one of the best players to never make it into the Hall.” In other words, history won’t forget him, which is part of the reason all these Halls of Fame exist. So he still sort of wins. Baseball wins too, because what happened to Rose will serve as an example to future players and managers: follow the rules and you have nothing to worry about.