Letter from Ted Potrikus

Rose Belongs in the Hall

“The Freeman’s Journal” and Charlie Vascellaro last week gave page one credence to the not unfathomable idea that Major League Baseball caved on Pete Rose’s lifetime ban owing to strongarm tactics from President Donald Trump. Top-of-the-fold feature placement with a pair of high-resolution photos “courtesy of Andy Levine, head of sales, Trump National Golf Club Hudson Valley” suggests to the reader the story was a pitch from Mr. Levine, replete with the promise of a picture of the president autographing his Rose-endorsement baseball like it was one of his ubiquitous executive orders.

Mr. Vascellaro’s analysis drives home that idea, observing “current Commissioner Rob Manfred, who denied Rose’s two previous applications” for reinstatement, changed his mind “three weeks after meeting with President Trump at the White House on April 17” and lifted the ban to reinstate Mr. Rose and his eligibility for Hall of Fame immortality.

Perhaps we shouldn’t hold Rob Manfred to standards higher than Jeff Bezos, the United States Congress, and magnates everywhere capitulating to the bottomless roster of Trump demands, but after decades of Major League Baseball insisting that Mr. Rose and his gambling pals from the Chicago Black Sox were some sort of pox on baseball’s self-satisfied moral purity, it would be nice if he came clean and just said, “The President threatened to Make Baseball Great Again unless I let Pete Rose into the Hall. It was either that or every team would have been required to wear those silly red caps.”

Trump lobbying or no, I have no problem with the best hitter in the history of the game getting his plaque in Cooperstown. He could have his own little section in the Hall sponsored by, oh, I don’t know, FanDuel.

MLB’s sniffy declamation on the bright-line separation between gambling and the game should have come to an end the minute the corporation struck its deals with this sports book and that. You can neither watch nor listen to a game these days without the incessant pelting of newly-made-up statistics, commercials, and flashy graphics offering best bets, shortcuts, and easy in-app mid-game wagers.

I’m personally opposed to gambling—not to claiming some moral high ground but because I’m too thick to understand it and I know I’d end up losing my shirt by the third inning on opening day. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a parlay and an over-under.

Yet gambling now is as much a part of Major League Baseball as is StatCast, Sabermetrics, AppleTV’s very bad Friday night broadcasts, walk-up music, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet. It’s ridiculous for the League to continue its pollyannaish belief that its players—the stars on whom billions are betting billions and therefore driving billions in revenue back into the League—should be robotically immune from dabbling in the monolith staring hard at them with every pitch.

I think Pete Rose belongs in the Hall. He bet on his own team but never to lose. He got caught and he fessed up. He did enough of a mea culpa that it’s a shame he won’t get to make the speech in Cooperstown he should’ve been allowed to make years ago.

Ted Potrikus
Tucson, Arizona

Editor’s Note: The photos of President Trump and his autographed baseball for Pete Rose used on page one last week [“Posthumous Reinstatement Resurrects Rose’s HoF Candidacy,” May 22, 2025] were not provided by the Trump administration or any other Trump affiliates. The photos were provided by a third party and used with permission. Mr. Vascellaro’s story was not prompted by Trump entities in any way.