For Pete's sake, lift Rose's ban, Bud

I’m on a listserve with sports journalists who enjoy the give and take of talking candidly about life. Maybe that’s putting what we do far too politely, because our discussions can be as brutal as the time I sat with Michigan fans when my Buckeyes went to Ann Arbor. We wage verbal warfare over our differing points of view.

Being irreverent isn't beneath us; neither is being politically incorrect nor downright goofy, such has the two- or three-day discussions on soul food and fried chicken. (Popeye’s and KFC didn’t get a mention in this freewheeling chitchat.)

One of the listserve’s topics recently was Pete Rose. We kicked around whether Rose was a better leadoff hitter than Rickey Henderson. We never did reach a consensus, though I reminded my comrades that Henderson’s speed made him far more dangerous than Rose. I made headway with that reasoning.

Yet what livened the discussion most was the position some people took about Rose’s not being in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. One person argued that how can a Hall of Fame hold any credibility if the man with the most hits in the sport’s history isn’t worthy of enshrinement.

Actually, worthiness has nothing to do with the doors to Cooperstown being closed to Rose. He’s absent from baseball’s holiest temple because he flouted its most sacred rule: no betting on the sport.

Evidence that he did brought Rose a lifetime ban in 1989, and it looks as if the ban will last his lifetime, which is a pity. Pete Rose deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.

There, I’ve said it.

For me, the position reflects a 180-degree turn. I thought Commissioner Bud Selig, or whoever has kept Rose on the banned list, might rightfully be waiting for Rose to die before lifting the ban. At one point, I agreed with Selig; his reasoning made sense.

Now, I believe Selig does baseball and its faithful a disservice by keeping the greatest goodwill ambassador the sport has ever seen ineligible for election to the Hall of Fame. For no player, banned or not, has traveled to more baseball venues, signed more people’s autograph books, shaken more hands and taken more photographs than Pete Rose, yet he remains in baseball’s purgatory.

With another season behind Rose, Selig should commute his sentence to the 20 years served. He should do so not for Pete Rose’s sake but for the men and women, boys and girls who think keeping Charlie Hustle outside the family of baseball hurts the game more than anything he did when he bet on it.

Leaking names as bad as PED abuse itself

Journalists preach about integrity and transparency, two noble principles that have long been the hallmark of the profession. Yet those principles can collude head-on with the issue of privacy.

When it does, privacy should seldom lose.

But privacy took a trouncing when journalism steamrolled it with the ongoing leaks of names of ballplayers who used performance-enhancing drugs (or steroids). Their names were supposedly on a “secret” list. Yet it seems as if each day another player whose name made the list is outed, much to the consternation of the player and his union leaders.

They had agreed to the testing under the condition players who tested positive for using PED would have their identities kept secret. The agreement also satisfied people at the highest levels of the Commissioner's Office.

Deals like these, however, are as shaky as a house built with Popsicle sticks. They fall apart because a well-kept secret is as rare as a game-ending triple play. So, of course, such a deal had no chance of holding up, and it didn’t.

Not that I have one ounce of sympathy for men like Alex Rodriquez, David Ortiz and Miguel Tejada, men whose names made the users' list. For what they did was stain the game’s integrity, and no American sport has put a higher value on its integrity than baseball.       

I do, however, think the PED abusers are owed more than a bad bargain. To leak their names cast a spotlight on them that is unwarranted. To leak their names, by all accounts, was illegal, too.

Illegality outrages journalists. They pour endless hours and as much of their newspaper’s money into setting a wrong right. Yet I have not seen a single newspaper or Internet company or newsmagazine take aim at the man (or men) who leaked these names. 

The leaker has become baseball’s version of “Deep Throat,” though comparisons between the two are as absurd as comparing Morton’s to McDonald’s. Both serve meals, but does anyone want to build a gourmet dinnerl around a bagful of Big Macs?

Somewhere out there is a journalist who sees the injustice of what has happened to these ballplayers. I would like to think that an investigative reporter for a media company with pockets deep enough will explore the matter: find the person who leaked the names. The reporter might find a Pulitzer Prize in it for him.

I hope he uncovers the person’s name not to vindicate the PED abusers but to make certain that people in positions to keep secrets, keep secrets. For to assail the behavior of Rodriguez and Ortiz on one front leaves no choice, as unseemly as it might be to people, but to do likewise on the legal front.

As bad as what the 104 PED abusers did, it pales in comparison to breaking the law in leaking names. The man who did deserves more than public scorn. A caning sounds about right.

Or, better yet, a prison cell next to Bernie Madoff.