Column: Charlie Hustle vs. The MLB Hall of Fame

By Finn Kempkes
HottyToddy Intern

When one thinks of what makes a great athlete, one typically thinks of special accomplishments that have proven themselves better than their peers. It would be thought that a hall of fame would include the best of the best. The people that have shown without a sliver of doubt that they have achieved fame through their achievements in their respective sport.

When selecting a potential hall of fame inductees in the NFL, committee members are told to only consider a player’s contributions to the sport and disregard all other factors. I would like to argue that the Baseball Hall of Fame follows their lead and ends there singling out Pete Rose, AKA Charlie Hustle. After Rose was made “permanently ineligible” as a result of sports betting in 1989, the Baseball Hall of Fame then soon chose to ban all “permanently ineligible” players from ever having a spot in their halls.

Through this change of bylaws, the Baseball Hall of Fame has chosen to measure one of the best players of all time, a man that still leads the league in hits (4,256), games played (3,562), at-bats (14,053), singles (3,215), and outs (10,328), not by his achievements, but by the fact that he had so much faith in his team that he bet money on it. When people like Barry Bonds are still eligible after using performance-enhancing drugs, I see no reason why Rose shouldn’t be able to enter the Hall of Fame.

Hope isn’t gone just yet, there is renewed interest in having Rose reinstated. President Trump recently tweeted about Rose paying a decade’s long price for betting on his own team. There is also renewed interest as the MLB ever loosens its punishments, especially after the Houston Astros received nothing more than a slap on the wrist and cleaned house after they got caught cheating after winning the World Series. If every player that cheated on the Astros gets to keep the title of World Series champion, it is fairly absurd that a man who advanced his baseball career fairly, a man who simply had faith in his team, has to serve this unending penalty.

This is a pivotal point in baseball history, the question of how the MLB and the Baseball Hall of Fame deal with the issues at hand. Will, they simply leave the past in the past and continue to let teams devolve into a win by any means necessary, or will they reevaluate what is happening within the sport? I certainly hope that the people in charge will rethink what they want for the future of the league.

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