Bill Conlin: For 20th anniversary, let Hall of Fame voters snub Pete Rose

I believe Rose's lifetime ban was his just desserts. It should never be lifted.

But I also believe his exclusion from the Hall of Fame ballot was unjust. When he fell in with the Gold's Gym scuzzballs who helped feed his gambling habit and began his betting slip-documented wagering on baseball games, he was no longer a player. In seven volumes of Dowd Report evidence, there is nothing linking him to betting on baseball while a player.

The Hall of Fame is a private, nonprofit, entity. While it certainly walks in step with MLB's agendas, the HOF unilaterally invoked the 1991 ballot ban by a 12-0 vote.

Major League Baseball gave Rose his day in court 20 years ago. Now he deserves the same appraisal of his career and his smarmy life in its latter stages as Mark McGwire, a self-hung man indicted by what he didn't say to a congressional committee. McGwire and Sammy Sosa were lionized for revitalizing flagging interest in baseball with their thrilling but "enhanced" 1998 assault on the single-season home-run record. McGwire has been nearly 50 percent shy of the required 75 percentage in each of his first three Cooperstown elections.

Would Pete Rose fare any better if the Hall of Fame directors handed him back to the BBWAA for a onetime special election?

I don't think so.

But even a landslide rejection would provide a fitting interment for the 4,256 basehits stroked by an imperfect man who played the game of baseball as perfectly as anybody ever has. *

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