In a Hollywood-esque piece of serendipity, on the last day of the Major League Baseball season, Pete Rose has died at the age of 83.
If you look at the season as a life and the post season as a Hall of Fame, it sadly lines up.
Sure, Rose bet on games.
He also played more games (3,562), had more at-bats (14,053), accumulated more hits (4,256) than anyone in the history of the sport and had more than 200 hits in 10 different seasons. All of those numbers are major league records that have stood since he retired in 1986. He was named to the All-Star squad 17 of his 24 active seasons as well.
The idea of someone holding 4 significant MLB records for nearly 40 years and NOT being in the Hall of Fame is just silly.
It is long past time for an asterisk section, with all the gory details writ large to make it clear that the inclusion isn't an honour but just an acknowledgement of the facts.
If necessary, open it only to the asterisk players once they die so they cannot collect on the glory, even tainted, of being in the Hall. Steriods, gambling, criminal activity and more can disqualify a player from the Hall, but none of those things erase a player's dominance during their career. They might have cheated, but they still DID it. You can't tell me that Babe Ruth never played loaded (or that he didn't drink like a fish during his career which coincided with Prohibition, making him a law breaker) or that there aren't men who abused their wives and kids in the Hall or a hundred other disqualifications. The only difference is that they never got caught. Ty Cobb is in the Hall and by all accounts he was a TERRIBLE human being on a bunch of levels.
Shoeless Joe, Pete Rose and a whole host of steroid era hitters like Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa who aren't technically banned but won't ever be voted in as legitimate inductees were DOMINANT in their day. That the all-time single season home run record holder, Barry Bonds, isn't in the Hall in some way or other is mind boggling. How does ignoring the most dominant hitter of an era serve baseball?
I'm not in any way suggesting that the cheating behaviours be forgiven or glossed over, but the Hall of Fame is a museum of sorts and a museum needs to display the truth. The truth is, Pete Rose hit safely more times during his career than anyone in history. Not putting him in the Hall isn't punishing him anymore, it's denying a historical truth.
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