Charlie Hustle

I'm not much of a baseball fan, so maybe I'm not the best one to express this opinion, but I wanted to publish my opinion of Pete Rose and the Baseball Hall of Fame.
First of all, let me point out that I think gambling in and of itself is wrong. If you think it's okay, and you want to go out and 'have a good time' with it, okay. I'm not trying to tell anyone how to live his life. For Pete Rose, as a player and a manager, to bet on baseball is particularly wrong. I can understand if he felt like he was batting on games that he had no special knowledge, for example, playing for the Reds, but betting on a game played between to other teams that the Reds had not faced yet that season. Does that make sense? If he was betting on a game between two teams that he had recently played against, then he has some knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of each team. This would be something akin to insider trading.
He denied betting on baseball for years, even after the Dowd Report came out in 1989, but, in 2004, finally wrote a book, My Prison Without Bars, admitting his gambling activities. To a lot of people, that was too little, too late. I can somewhat understand that; it would have been different if he had made the admission ten or fifteen years earlier.
He says that he never bet against his team. I tend to believe him, although, to be honest, it's complicated. Obviously, a bookie isn't likely to take a bet from Charlie Hustle against his own team. That would be foolish, unless he already has a bunch of people betting that the Reds would win, and paying off on Rose's bet would actually mean making more money than if he didn't take the bet, and the Reds wound up winning (the theory being, that if Rose is betting against the Reds, either he knows something that the rest of us don't, or he knows that this is a game that the Reds should win, but that he could prevent them from winning and profit off of the long odds). Of course, Rose could have used an intermediary, but I would wonder why this person has never come forward, although, there could be many reasons).
In any case, it seems to me that the Hall of Fame should be celebrating players' accomplishments on the field. What he did off the field is not so important to his Hall of Fame consideration. He's got some pretty impressive stats, even after you compensate for the fact that, as player-manager of the Reds, he occasionally put himself in the game when he really should have given a younger player a chance. He was only the second player in MLB history to break 4,000 career hits (and, yes, that was before he became a player-manager), is the only player in MLB history to play five different positions in All-Star games... I could go on, but let me refer you to Baseball-reference.com; they factor in all of the different statistics of Hall of Fame worthiness, and produce a number. Several players have been inducted into the Hall with lower numbers than Rose's, in fact, the only non-inductee with a higher number than Rose's is Barry Bonds, who is not yet eligible (and, may not ever be). He's made some mistakes, but so have we all. Do you know anybody walking around today that has lived a perfect life? I don't.