26 Years Is Enough
March 23 2015 08:19 PM
Pete Rose Appeals for MLB Reinstatement
| New York Daily News |
One of the saddest sights I ever saw, I think, was a few years ago in Las Vegas: Pete Rose sitting alone at a little card table outside a sports memorabilia store in the Retail Promenade (read “mini mall”} of the Mirage Hotel, selling his autograph. It was the middle of the afternoon, a weekday, pretty much just us and Pete. I had no idea he would be there, we were just walking by on our way somewhere else and there he was. I spotted him, recognizing him instantly, but my brain couldn’t make it jibe fast enough. Pete Rose? Really?
He looked so small and so sad and so alone.
I couldn’t bring myself to walk over. And I couldn’t bring myself to pull out my phone and snap a picture. It would have been like taking a picture of a corpse alongside a dumpster, like a photo Weegee would have shot, but with the corpse still alive and watching you.
Today Pete Rose petitioned MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred to lift his lifetime ban from baseball.
Twenty-six years of exile is enough. Major League Baseball, and all of us who thought the ban was justified, have made our point. It’s time to move on. It is time to forgive Pete Rose and allow Charlie Hustle to come home.
| New York Daily News |
One of the saddest sights I ever saw, I think, was a few years ago in Las Vegas: Pete Rose sitting alone at a little card table outside a sports memorabilia store in the Retail Promenade (read “mini mall”} of the Mirage Hotel, selling his autograph. It was the middle of the afternoon, a weekday, pretty much just us and Pete. I had no idea he would be there, we were just walking by on our way somewhere else and there he was. I spotted him, recognizing him instantly, but my brain couldn’t make it jibe fast enough. Pete Rose? Really?
He looked so small and so sad and so alone.
I couldn’t bring myself to walk over. And I couldn’t bring myself to pull out my phone and snap a picture. It would have been like taking a picture of a corpse alongside a dumpster, like a photo Weegee would have shot, but with the corpse still alive and watching you.
Today Pete Rose petitioned MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred to lift his lifetime ban from baseball.
Twenty-six years of exile is enough. Major League Baseball, and all of us who thought the ban was justified, have made our point. It’s time to move on. It is time to forgive Pete Rose and allow Charlie Hustle to come home.