by Nathan Halfpenny

Created on: July 25, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

The answer to this debate can be summed up with one number, 4,256. That is the number of hits Peter Edward Rose amassed in his hall of fame career. Nothing else beyond this number should matter. It doesn't matter that he was a career .303 batter, it shouldn't matter that he is 6th all-time in runs scored with 2,165 and it shouldn't matter that he has played more than 200 games more than any other player in history. The fact that he is 13th all-time in walks and 2nd all-time in doubles should be irrelevant too. Rose is known as one of the most durable and reliable players in the history of the game earning him the moniker of "Charlie Hustle". Not to mention that Rose was a member of three world championship teams, he won the batting title three times, two gold gloves, rookie of the year and was an all-star 17 times. He also won baseball's most valuable player (MVP) award in 1973 on a team with 3 future hall of famers, Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench and Tony Perez. Rose is unquestionably one of the game's greatest players but perhaps its most controversial.

On August 15th, 1984 Rose was traded to the Reds back to the Reds after a brief stint with the Montreal Expos and was immediately named a player-manager, he would later retire as a player and take over the sole position of manager for the club. It was then, that Rose ran into all of his problems and for it has since been banned from baseball. Rose was accused of betting on major league baseball games, with reports stating amounts ranging from $2,000 - $10,000 daily. Attorney John Dowd was hired to conduct an investigation into these accusations and he compiled what is now known as the Dowd Report. The report displayed overwhelming evidence against Rose showing that he had in fact not only bet on MLB games but Reds games as well, ones that he was the manager of. However, in the report no evidence was shown that Rose ever bet against his own team. While Rose is quite obviously wrong for having be on games he was involved in, if he never bet against his own team wouldn't that suggest that he was still trying to win all the games he was managing? Isn't that the point of the game anyway, to win? For years Rose denied allegations and dug a deeper hole for himself ostracizing himself from the game and baseball as an institution. In January of 2004 Rose's book "My Prison Without Bars" was published and he finally admitted to gambling on sports and on games he was directly involved with but never against his own team.

While it is quite obvious that Rose made some ill-advised decisions in betting on baseball, are these choices worthy of keeping him out of the hall of fame? Baseball's hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York, is for the best of the best baseball players, not people. One can make the argument that Rose may not belong in baseball's nicest guy hall of fame, but his statistics speak for themselves. If admitted, Rose would certainly not be the first controversial figure in the hall anyway. Cap Anson, a hall of famer, on many occasions refused to take the field if the other team had a black player on their roster. Ty Cobb, whose record Rose broke for most career hits, was known to have a short temper, a severely racist personality and was intensely disliked by many of his teammates. Rogers Hornsby, inducted in 1942, was a compulsive gambler and by his own admission a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The baseball hall of fame should be just that, a place where the best brightest in the game of baseball can be honored for their talents on the field, not judged by their characters off the field.

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