Addictions

When you talk about addiction, most people automatically think about drugs. Certainly drug addiction is a serious problem, but there are other addictions. Some people don't think of alcohol as a drug, but it is, and so alcoholism is just another drug addiction. Nicotine is also a drug, but it is generally more habit-forming than addicting. Part of the problem is that different people are susceptible to different things. One person may be able to smoke for awhile, and then stop for awhile, and then pick it up again, while another person may suffer withdrawal symptoms within hours after putting out a cigarette; for one, it's a habit, for the other, it's an addiction.

But drugs are not the only thing. For some people, gambling is an addiction. Granted, there is a certain amount of thinking that they just need one quick win to get ahead, and then they will stop; but the more they gamble, the more they lose, and the bigger the win needed to get out of the hole, and then, on the rare occasion that they actually get that big win, then they develop the attitude that they can afford to gamble now, they have money, and end up losing everything anyway. Casinos don't exist to make their customers rich--they exist to make their owners rich.

Some people find pornography addicting. Psychologists say that the appeal of pornography is that one can engage in sexual activity without actual having to go through the social activity that normally leads to the emotional closeness that should lead to, well, I'll say marriage, even though most psychologists probably don't consider marriage to be a mandatory precursor to sexual activity... The problem, of course, is that God has given us a desire to procreate: We, being the basically simple-minded people that we are, have turned that into a simple desire for sex, at least on the surface. Below the surface, though, there is a desire to see our genes, our DNA, in the children that will eventually grow up and, either take care of us in our declining years, or choose our nursing homes. No matter how much pornography one views, that basic need is never met: It's sort of like painting over rotting wood to cover the problem instead of replacing the wood and fixing the problem.

There is a statement commonly attributed to John D. Rockefeller (although I can't find anything to directly link him to the quote), that, when asked "How much money does it take to make a man happy?" he replied, "Just a little bit more." In the book of Ecclesiastes, God tells us that we will never be satisfied with increase; this doesn't just apply to money. Whatever action that makes one feel better, if it is not of God, will snowball; it will take more and more to achieve that same feeling, and, even then, it's a temporary feel-good type of thing, it is not satisfaction. Mick Jagger was right about that...

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.