Pete Rose to Be Pardoned by Baseball Soon?

Balls to the wall when Pete hit the field

They called him "Charlie Hustle" (Photo: redmarketer.wordpress.com)

I am an insatiable baseball fanatic. Long after the final pitch of the World Series, months before pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training in Arizona and Florida for Cactus and Grapefruit League games, I am thinking about the game, reading about the game, playing the game when I can and running computer simulations that attempt to answer those questions about which team was the greatest and who would excel in any era of the history of the game. I even used to be a member of the San Diego chapter of SABR (the Society for American Baseball Research). Didn’t make any meetings, but I contributed to the cause by purchasing some publications.

During the season, I’m in a blessed nirvana. Unfortunately, I now live in a city that isn’t conveniently close to Major League Baseball action. It’s a six-hour drive away, which doesn’t always work when you have young children. But even if it were closer, it’s expensive to attend games. I could use a payday loan or cash advance to help me afford one trip, but I certainly couldn’t make a habit of doing that.

I like to think about the greatest ever to play

And I don’t delude myself into thinking that off-the-field activities that have no bearing on the outcomes of games should have any influence on which players are honored in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Yet that’s exactly what happened to Jim Rice. He didn’t make it into the Hall until his 15th year of eligibility, solely because he wasn’t a popular player with the sportswriters who vote on such things. On the field, his stats were more than sufficient to warrant Hall of Fame recognition. ... click here to read the rest of the article titled "Pete Rose to Be Pardoned by Baseball Soon?"