Mike Schmidt on Pete Rose

[RShack]

Maybe it seems like I'm being a hard-(insert expletive here) on this. But I think I'm coming from a position of having read a lot about baseball history, and knowing that all of this stuff has test cases. We know what a culture of gambling does to the game.

In the 1910s... [stuff deleted]

Baseball has been on the brink before. I don't want to go back.

Nobody's saying betting on games if fine. But being a hard-ass about betting while being wishy-washy about roids is goofy IMO. Not saying there's an easy answer about roids, but if you're concerned about the integrity of the game and the fans' perception of that, then betting is ancient history while the roids issue is fresh. Plus, with ballplayers being rich, betting presents way less of a vulnerability than it did when guys were playing for peanuts. Not saying that betting doesn't matter or that it should be ignored. But I am saying it's a matter of proportion. To keep the guy who has the most hits of anybody ever out of Cooperstown because of what he did after he was finished being a player seems bizarrely rigid and way out of proportion.

On the one hand, you say you have a sliding scale, but on the other hand, you're digging into a position that fails to make any distinctions about things that are perfectly relevant to the case at hand. If you're gonna dig in about Rose's post-playing-career betting for his team to win, but then wave your hands and say vague mumbe-mumble about guys who used roids to put up phony numbers, well, I don't see how that adds up. Seems to me like you're worrying more about 1910-concerns than modern-day concerns.

[Moose Milligan]

I think most or all of his points are irrelevant. Has anyone ever been banned for placing a $5 bet on his own team to win? When his points of reference are $5, $500,000, and $1M it weems like he's picking out extreme cases and using that as a way to justify a sliding scale. It's like he's asking if speeding is not so bad, and then being ok with someone going 100 in a 50 because a poll he took asked if your drivers license should be ripped up for going a) 51 in a 50, b) 150 in a 50, or c) 250 in a 50.

Of course there are worse things in the world than betting on baseball. That's not the point. Yes, committing a terroist act is worse than gambing on baseball. (In my mind using "gambling in baseball" and "terrorist act" in the same paragraph is like comparing your opponent to Nazis in a debate - you're pretty much done right there) Shooting 158 people is worse than shooting one. But that doesn't mean the punishment for shooting one should be scaled down.

So I'll bite. Sure, there's a sliding scale. In my mind it's betting a trivial amount of money might be ok if it's just joking around and obviously nobody cares about that level of money and it's not even really considered a bet. Kind of like me betting someone $1 to take a shot of that butter at the crab house. But anything beyond that is strictly verboten.

I just don't see any possible good coming out of constantly having arguments about what level of influence gambling should have in the game. The level is basically zero. Beyond that there's always going to be questions about whether the game was on the up-and-up, or someone was on the take.

The points aren't irrelevant at all. He makes the 5$ vs. 5 million argument to combat specifically what you're saying...that all gambling is gambling.

Again, I agree that the level is basically zero. However I think this is more of a case if the punishment is fitting the crime.

[Migrant Redbird]

I'm wondering what the NFL is going to do to the Jets for issuing false injury reports last season? In my opinion, that was far, far worse than what Rose did. We know that millions of dollars is wagered every week on NFL games and knowing that Brett Favre had a torn biceps tendon would absolutely have been useful information to any bettor wanting to wager on a Jets game.

My bet is that the Jets get a relative slap on the wrist -- at worst a fine running into 6 figures and/or loss of a 1st round draft pick. And that's the most which Pete Rose should have been penalized.