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Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player as a child. I loved the way he played; he made the most of his talent, and he had a great mind for the game.

It was not until I was at least an adolescent that I realized what a monster he was in a personal sense. My loyalty to his principal team, the Cincinnati Reds, remains unshakable, but I found myself in the uncomfortable position of forgiving his transgressions publicly and repeatedly before his detractors, who had such obvious basis for their opinions.

I caught the man tonight. He was at one point described as "the greatest hitter in the history of baseball" by his fawning TV interviewer, David Durgan (go back to radio! Yeah, I know he has more "career hits", but that does not make him the "greatest hitter"). So you see what kind of interview it was: the kind he likes. He does quite well in such a situation and loosens up, and the real Pete Rose, an idiot savant of the game, emerges.

Pete's employed by Vegas, now. He responded to the suggestion that he might take his publicity drive on the road, earning public forgiveness and possibly eventual Hall of Fame enshrinement if he were to speak against the dangers of compulsive gambling and its harm, by saying, "I'm a family man. I have to make money for the family."

The occasion of this family man's appearance actually was to allow him to protest his son's imprisonment for distributing (not selling) steroid-like artificial compounds to two minor-league teammates. The term of imprisonment is apparently 30 days, and Pete Sr. complains that his son is being discriminated against because of his famous father and the rap against him.

I will leave aside the possibility that some might feel the punishment for this federal crime (!) may be light and admit I'm neither a chemist nor a drug enforcement lawyer. I do have to call attention to the irony of his son's apparent will to succeed by any means taking the form of unsanctioned behavior. Just like his dad.

I believe that Pete has indeed made peace with the fact that he will always be an un-enshrined asterisk from a Hall of Fame perspective. It's too much work to repair his public image, and he's not ideally suited for it.

I wouldn't envy the Hall of Fame electorate of sportswriters the tough decision on Rose--if they had it. I would still urge that his name be out there, and that they have to make it. Continuously--not just a one-year boycott and dumping the name for failing to get the required 10% or whatever, as that's unworthy of the voters and Rose's baseball accomplishments.

Moral relativism being what it is (i.e., a fact), he could still get elected sometime this century (and that would be OK!) Moral standards can move both ways: I daresay the percentage of people has risen in recent times who can not forgive Thomas Jefferson for the sins of owning, and even selectively bedding, his slaves. More to the point, though, many things deemed improper, cheating, or just "not sporting" of the past are now more accepted (think of the recent change in the Olympics, from amateurism-->shamateurism and Commie-state sponsored athletes-->acceptance of professionalism) So, our already highly confessional society might move to pardon his fundamental sin of "betting on his own team", and worse, being known to do so (and presumably, known by at least some mobsters when he's not doing so).

My sense from the comments of those I read who do have that privilege of voting (which they endow with unreasonable importance) is that they will have enough to deal with in coming years, starting with McGwire, followed soon after by Sosa and then Bonds. They've moved on past Rose, too.

His baseball-related complaint about being banned from the game today focuses not on the Hall, but on being unable to practice his trade, particularly managing or coaching a team. I have a solution for that: why doesn't he see if he can manage in Japan or something (with an interpreter)? Better yet, I have the feeling that the up-and-coming baseball power Australia (why not? they're good at every other sport) could find a place for him. They might even enjoy him as a sort of comic character, a "Yank" Crocodile Dundee equivalent. OK, the 30 teams which control MLB, Inc. through their official puppet, the Commissioner of Baseball, have agreed, tacitly or implicitly, to allow him to be frozen out. I see no evidence that they have control over the game in other nations (besides complicit Toronto, Canada)--maybe he won't start at the top and will have to prove himself.

As for myself, if I had the vote, he's in. One has to separate the baseball accomplishments, which in his case are not unparalleled but are truly outstanding, from the off-field (or even in-dugout) disgraces. As the voters once did quite easily once upon a time with Cobb, Wagner, Sisler. Ah, but those were different times!