Rose Vs Bonds

Okay....I admit it. I read Fox Sports on the internet almost daily. I confess; I am a sports fan in general, and a Reds, Browns, and Rockets fan in particular. Since I've been a Reds fan for as long as I can remember (I'm 50, so it's got to be at least 45 years or so), I was more than a little intrigued when I read an article that compared what Barry did to what Pete did. Maybe intrigued isn't the right word.

Actually, I was flabergasted! The author attempted to say that what Pete did was worse for the game because it went to the integrity of the game itself. He said that there was evidence that Pete bet on his own team, even though Pete claims that he never bet on the Reds to lose (As the manager, he'd have been "taking a fall" in games if that was the case and THAT would have been reprehensible!), but Pete's integrity wasn't such that his word was reliable on that claim. Well, I say, do you have Pete's betting slips or not? It seems to me that if someone wanted to refudiate Pete's claim, the evidence is available to do just that.

I don't see anyone stepping forward!

Then there's the argument that betting on the Reds to win was just as bad, because on the days that he did not bet, it was the same thing to other people betting as betting on the Reds to lose. I'm sorry, but that's pretty weak. Did he place a bet every single day? Was there evidence that he bet on the Reds only when they played the Expos, or was he all over the map on that one? I'd have to say, it was bad that he bet on baseball games at all. It was worse that he bet on his own team. It was WORSE that he lied about it for so long! But I have a hard time saying that what Pete did was worse for the game than what Barry has done.

Let's face it. The McGuire/Sosa home run race of several years ago reinvigorated baseball. Before that, fans were staying home in droves, still upset about the cancellation of the World Series because of the player's union strike. The chase toward the new single-season record by Barry, and then the chase of Hank Aaron's career record, kept the excitement going. Frankly, I'm not nearly as upset about Pete Rose betting on Reds games as I am about Barry lying to me and everyone else about the most hallowed records in the game. "Hang an asterisk on him?" you say. So what? He still has the record and who knows how many of his home runs were steroid-induced? I'd have to say it like this; did the Reds benefit from Rose's indiscretion such that baseball was forever tarnished, or was baseball forever tarnished more because of what Barry did? I'd have to say that I have a hard time believing in baseball more now after "Barrygate" than I did after the Rose scandal came to light. That, my friends, is the yardstick that should be measured, NOT how comparitively loathesome Barry's act was compared to Pete's. Let's face it; BOTH of them did things that are absolutely dispicable in a baseball sense. One of them ruined the integrity of the game in my eyes, and it was NOT Pete. - Dan