On Pete Rose, Forgiveness, and History

I pondered making this a video post, because I don’t know if I’m skilled enough as a writer to convey the level of my reluctance to address this subject. I thought maybe the repeated heavy sighs and eye-rolling that would be evident in a video would probably convey that better.

Ultimately I decided to give it a go here anyway, as you can see, and that decision came down to a pretty simple reason: I don’t want a video clip out in the world of me talking about some politician’s opinion on Pete Rose’s place in the Hall of Fame.

I could just ignore the whole issue, and I damn near did, but I fear this topic is only going to gain steam in the coming weeks and months, and I write a newsletter about baseball history that is heavily focused on the workings of the Hall of Fame. It would become obvious pretty quickly that I was ducking the issue if I said nothing. In light of that, I decided to give it a shot.

To be clear, I am going to continue to adhere to my rule of not discussing actual politics. Baseball is for everyone, regardless of political leanings, and its history is for everyone, too. There’s no reason, in my view, to muddy any of that by making one side or the other of the political spectrum feel unwelcome in any discussion of the game and its past. It should, and I hope often does, serve as a unifying presence in our lives. As such, I far prefer when politicians of all types just stay away from baseball entirely rather than say something that will, in our current political climate, inevitably be divisive.