Hall of Fame or no? What is your vote? I get the whole betting on baseball is the cardinal sin in baseball. I'm all for the integrity of any sport. BUT.... come on man! The dude has served 25 years punishment!! He has 4,256 hits and that record will never be acknowledged in Cooperstown? People commit murder and serve less time for crying out loud. Ray Rice clocked his girlfriend and will have a jersey on next year. Adrian Peterson hit his kid with a branch and will be playing next year. And on and on and on and on....... I think it's a little much. The dude made a mistake, served an enormous amount of time for it. Let him back in baseball. Example has been made already.
It's indefensible that he remains out of the HOF. People making that argument don't really have a leg to stand on when it comes to the purity of the dirtiest sport in America. Top 10 player all time deserves to be in the HOF. /Argument
Unless they could prove that he threw games to win his bets, I just don't think there's any good reason to keep him out.
The thing is, they never found that he made a single bet against the Reds, it was always for them to win. If someone were betting for their team to lose, that's a completely different story in my opinion. Rules are rules but geez, it's disgusting to see people who likely used PEDs and are sitting in the HOF and a baseball legend bet for his team to win is sitting on the outside, it just seems like nonsense at this point. The whole sport.
I agree he deserves to be included in the HOF. I think the HOF needs a section for 'controversial' inductees - as they played a part in the history of the game. Just my 2-cents.
No. If you bend the rules for one guy just because he was a exceptional player how do treat the next guy that beets his wife or sells drugs in the locker room. We have lance armstrong that I think everyone feels he cheated everything and every player that competed against him but how will this play out in 30 years? How soon we forget is all I am saying. I would hope that the hall of fame is more then just numbers. No matter how much time passes don't reward cheaters.
Nope..... don't allow him to be eligible to be voted in. He bet on baseball! He signed a ban agreement but yet he continued to thumb his nose at MLB and denied for all of those years before he finally admitted to it. For those who defend him by saying he "only" bet on his team to win. What if his team was playing and he was considering a bet for the following day? He may adjust his lineup (especially pitching) or manage differently to have a better chance to win on the game bet on versus the game not bet on. All of his contributions as a player don't matter to me. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of now becoming eligible to be voted for the HOF. If he somehow becomes eligible for the vote it would be interesting to see if enough of the baseball writers would vote to get him in or even the veterns committee would put him in.
What he did as a player is over shadowed by a life time ban for gambling on the game itself while he was a team manager. This needs to serv as a deterrent for the next pete rose.
That would be interesting. Just a guess based on what you hear from various writers/analyst I would think he would get voted in. Not sure.
He had two careers. One as a player and one as a manager. He deserves to be in as a player. At least put him on the ballot and let others decide. Guys like Bonds, that actually cheated to increase stats, are still on the ballot.
