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Pete Rose, citing the Astros, asks for reinstatement

Pete Rose Speaks To Media After Lifetime Ban Upheld

LAS VEGAS, NV - DECEMBER 15: Former Major League Baseball player and manager Pete Rose speaks during a news conference at Pete Rose Bar & Grill to respond to his lifetime ban from MLB for gambling being upheld on December 15, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred on Monday announced that he was rejecting Rose’s application for reinstatement. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

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ESPN is reporting that, this morning, Pete Rose sent a petition to the MLB commissioner’s office asking to be reinstated. The justification: that, in light of Houston Astros players not being punished for the sign-stealing stuff, Rose’s lifetime ban is “vastly disproportionate.”

From the petition:

“There cannot be one set of rules for Mr. Rose and another for everyone else. No objective standard or categorization of the rules violations committed by Mr. Rose can distinguish his violations from those that have incurred substantially less severe penalties from Major League Baseball.”

Rose, as always, is full of crap here.

He’s full of crap, mostly, because this is an apples and oranges situation. The Astros players not being punished for the sign-stealing stuff came pursuant to an agreed-upon standard between Rob Manfred and the Players’ Association. Rose’s permanent ban from baseball came pursuant to baseball’s explicit rules -- rules that are literally posted on the wall of every clubhouse in the game -- which are likewise incorporated by reference in all player and managerial contracts. As such, there is no more a double standard being employed here than there is for the justice system having two different sentencing guidelines for tax evasion and capital murder.

Rose, as he has done several times in the past, likewise notes that PED users have received less punishment that he did. Again, Rose would do best to shut up here.

He’d do best to shut up because it is well-documented that Rose took amphetamines as a player, and they are clearly performance-enhancing. It’s well-documented that Paul Janzen, the man who, according to the Dowd Report, was Rose’s primary bet-placer was also a steroids dealer. It’s well-documented that one of Rose’s best friends during his gambling days was a minor leaguer, Tommy Gioiosa, who was a heavy steroids user who shot up in front of Pete and to whom Pete constantly asked questions about steroids and PEDs, contemplating using them to extend his already lengthy career. A lengthy career that had him eke just past Ty Cobb for the hit record, so maybe Rose’s claims about the integrity of the game are garbage.

And all of that is before we get to the fact that, morally, ethically and cosmically, Rose has a lot more darkness in his past than I presume he admitted to in this morning’s petition.

This, as always, is opportunism from Rose. He’s using the Astros stuff as a means of raising his own profile for what I’m sure he knows by now is a doomed effort to be reinstated. He’s likely doing so in order to get in front of more microphones and cameras which, in turn, is good for the business of being Pete Rose, which is being a public figure who uses grievance and visibility in order to make a lot of money signing autographs and making personal appearances. That’s a rather pathetic place for one of the game’s greatest players to be in, but is a place in which he willingly put himself through his own actions, his own lies, and his own disregard for rules and laws.

I predict Rob Manfred will dismiss Rose’s petition faster than Rose can fill out a parlay card.

Follow @craigcalcaterra