Justifying Pete

Mandatory Credit: Rob Leifheit-USA TODAY Sports

The legendary Hit King himself claims that the use of PEDs far surpasses his betting scandal atrocities when it comes to a black eye for the game.  Of course, that’s true.  Pete is not opting to tell us any anything that we don’t already know.

Betting from the managerial position has never punctured a crater into the sport quite the way steroids and other performance enhancing drugs have.  That in no way justifies Pete, but it does make him right.

All of this came about when Rose reiterated to Michael Kay of ESPN Radio New York (98.7 FM) that while what he did was wrong, it was not even the same level of egregiousness.

This upcoming season will prove imperative for those blanketed by the Biogenesis scandal.  Ryan Braun has put himself on a meteoric rise to stardom, but who really knows how much was him, and how much was the PEDs?  If an athlete is as blatantly unintelligent as one who could lie to not only his entire fan base, but also the entire game itself, who’s to say that same ballplayer wouldn’t do it again?  It seems radical to assume that Braun would be that ignorant again, but this is the same person who held a public press conference with a smirk on his face, getting a MLB employee fired over his completely legal sample collecting.

One player we know that won’t be affecting outcomes during the 2014 season, will be none other than Alex Rodriguez.  Maybe more than any other player to ever suit up, we may never know just how good he truly was.  No one will ever know for how long and how much he has taken.  A career has been based on a fallacy that a young phenom became one of the greatest sluggers to ever live.  PEDs strip more than just a players morals, it takes away the fans sense of joy.

Money ultimately runs the motives of a majority of people within our great country.  Certainly, Pete Rose had more than he could ever need.  Trying to understand what motivated the most aggressive ballplayer in the modern era to commit an act so heinous, may never fully be understood.  He has said on countless occasions that if he could do it over again, he would opt not to.  Rose never had an unfair advantage over his competitors, outside of the fact that he was a tougher S.O.B. than anyone else in the league.

Rose, yet again is popping up, reminding the rest of us, lest we forget, just who the Hit King is.  His transgressions shook the game; but they did not transcend it.  Had it been a lesser player/manager to commit the act, it would undoubtedly hold its place in baseball lore, just not to this magnitude. 

Yes, Pete Rose was wrong.  No, he what he did is not worse than the juiced up “icons” of the past two decades.