It's been well known for 30 years or so that Pete Rose has, among his other problems, a gambling addiction. Out-of-control gambling has been formally recognized by the mental health profession as a real addiction. Unfortunately for Pete, it seems to be the only addiction a major-league baseball player can have which will get him banned from baseball, and keep him out of the Hall of Fame.

I'm not a Pete Rose fan. Pete was, to be sure, a fabulous baseball player who played the game right, and, because he did, he owns some of the sport's important records. His baseball achievements are what should be considered, because no one in the Hall of Fame is a saint.

He's intelligent and witty, but he's also churlish and loathe to acknowledge his shortcomings. Not only did he lie to the world about his gambling on baseball in general and his team in particular, but by lying he deceived his millions of supporters into believing he was unfairly persecuted by the late Bart Giamatti and all subsequent baseball commissioners.

That said, one need look no further than the Hall of Fame itself to see that Rose is, in fact, being royally screwed by Major League Baseball and its hypocrite of a commissioner, Allan (Bud) Selig.

Orlando Cepeda had a pretty good career. When his Hall of Fame eligibility began to wane, lots of people took his part to lobby for his induction. Although his 15-year eligibility did expire, he was later inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Veterans' Committee. Never mind that Cepeda was a convicted drug trafficker who served time. He shed a few tears, said he was sorry, (which seems a lie since, as of mid-2007, he apparently still has an on-going drug problem), the whole baseball world embraced him, and he got his plaque.

Long after their well-deserved inductions, greats Duke Snider and Willie McCovey were found guilty of tax evasion. It's no secret that some pre-free-agency greats of the game harbor ill feelings about being gypped out of the big money that all major leaguers get nowadays. Snider and McCovey were pulling in lots of cash signing autographs and figured, perhaps, that since they were former baseball greats, the government would simply overlook their tax obligations. Snider and McCovey turned on the tears in public, and, a la Cepeda, all was forgiven. But Rose had to do time for the same thing.

Baseball has virtually ignored the shortcomings and, in some, cases, crimes, of its players, all in the interest of growing

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