There is a newsletter, “Cup of Coffee,” Monday through Friday mornings. It comes from Craig Calcaterra. You may know of Craig from his days writing at NBC sports and other places. Cup of Coffee is about baseball. The games, the players, the state of things in the sport. It is also about Craig’s attitudes & opinions about lots of stuff. All worth reading.
The Commissioner of Baseball, an attorney who could care less about the game or its history or purity as opposed to seeing how he can squeeze every last cent out of MLB to line the pockets of his bosses, the team owners, met with the orange-haired autocrat recently. That miserable excuse for a human suggested to him that Pete Rose (gambler, liar, rapist) no longer be on the permanently ineligible list.
After Craig offered his always good take on the prior day’s baseball games he had a few choice words about this ungodly development. For your edification, with Craig’s permission, here is that section of yesterday’s Cup of Coffee.
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Rob Manfred reinstates Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson
Yesterday Commissioner Rob Manfred reinstated Pete Rose, removing him from Major League Baseball’s permanently ineligible list. He did the same for Shoeless Joe Jackson and others who were deemed permanently ineligible but who are now deceased, essentially transforming that longstanding designation to merely “ineligible for life.”
Those reinstated alongside Rose and Jackson include Chicago Black Sox players Eddie Cicotte, Happy Felsch, Chick Gandil, Fred McMullin, Swede Risberg, Buck Weaver, and Lefty Williams. Also included was Joe Gedeon, who wasn’t with the Black Sox but who was banned for “having guilty knowledge” of the plot. The others reinstated are Gene Paulette (gambling), Benny Kauff (alleged auto theft; kind of a long story), Lee Magee (gambling and game-fixing), Phil Douglas (it’s complicated), Cozy Dolan (attempted game-fixing), Jimmy O’Connell (attempted game-fixing), and William Cox (gambling).
Here’s Manfred’s reasoning as set forth in the letter he sent to the lawyer representing Rose’s family, which was subsequently released to the public:
“Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game,” Manfred wrote in a letter to attorney Jeffrey M. Lenkov, who petitioned for Rose’s removal from the list Jan. 8. “Moreover, it is hard to conceive of a penalty that has more deterrent effect than one that lasts a lifetime with no reprieve. Therefore, I have concluded that permanent ineligibility ends upon the passing of the disciplined individual, and Mr. Rose will be removed from the permanently ineligible list.”
Manfred can talk all he wants about the illogic in keeping dead people banned but he never would’ve done it if Donald Trump hadn’t inserted himself into this. Manfred and his predecessors have routinely said in the past that they weren’t touching this despite multiple petitions by Rose’s representatives and others but he did it yesterday specifically to please Trump and/or in an effort to head off Trump fucking with Major League Baseball.
We know this because this exact matter was before Manfred a decade ago, when a petition to reinstate Shoeless Joe Jackson was before the Commissioner. Here’s what Manfred said about that then:
“The results of this work demonstrate to me that it is not possible now, over 95 years since those events took place and were considered by Commissioner Landis, to be certain enough of the truth to overrule Commissioner Landis’ determinations.”
So this was a real profile in courage and integrity on Manfred’s part, I tell you what.
Now that they’re off the ineligible list Rose, Jackson, and the other previously-banned players are now at least theoretically eligible to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Their candidacies would, in the normal course, be decided by the Hall’s 16-member Classic Baseball Era Committee, which considers players whose careers ended more than 15 years ago. That committee isn’t scheduled to meet again until December 2027 and Rose and Jackson would need 12 of 16 votes to win induction, which seems like an impossibility given how those elections tend to go.
Which is, clearly, not going to be good enough for Donald Trump and the Pete Rose dead-enders who love them some Charlie Hustle. Now that the pressure campaign has caused Manfred to cave my guess is that there will be immense pressure to change and accelerate the Hall election process specifically for these guys, perhaps by attempting to force a “special election” of the newly-eligible criminals and gamblers. If they do try to force such a thing don’t count on Manfred or Hall Chair Jane Forbes Clark to offer any pushback. And don’t expect the committee deciding it all to be a normal one. The fix would likely be in, appropriately enough, and the committee in question would likely be stocked with ringers.
If you doubt that sort of pressure campaign will come to bear or that it’ll be successful if it does, just look the hell around. As Columbia University, Paramount, and multiple law firms have demonstrated, if you cave to Donald Trump, he always – always – demands more of you. We’ve seen it over and over. You surrender to him and you become his bitch. So good going, Rob Manfred. You just appointed Donald Trump Shadow Commissioner of Baseball. I hope you enjoy responding to his hateful and senile demands of the sport, because they’re gonna come one after the other now. Of that you can be certain.
Anyway, Pete Rose raped a child, compromised the competitive integrity of the game, and cravenly lied about it all until the day he died, never once offering genuine repentance for his many, many horrible acts. Despite that, yesterday Rob Manfred paved the way for him to receive the highest honor Major League Baseball can bestow, all because a horribly corrupt man with multiple felony convictions of his own bullied him into doing it.
Tells you everything you need to know about Rob Manfred, his ethics, his morals, and his spine. Fuck that guy. Fuck him sideways now and forever.
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Good job, Craig. Kudos!