Rose Rant

First of all, The Common Man begs your forgiveness for not posting in the last couple of days. When the weather broke on Saturday, The Common Man was able to get out of town with The Boy and return to the homeland. As a cold forced The Uncommon Wife to stay behind, and the grandparents are less inclined to ditch their walkers and chase a small child (though they really enjoy watching him run, and run, and run). So, The Common Man was on constant kid duty that wasn't alleviated at night or at naptime, as The Common Man was forced to keep close watch over The Boy so that he would stay in bed at night, and "encouraged" to go through his old room and clean out stuff during the day. Anyway, just know that his absence hurt The Common Man as much as it hurt you.

The Common Man was all set to start fresh in the morning, but since it's morning now, he might as well get a jump on things, since he's back home and all now. And look, here's a comment waiting for him from friend of the blog, BikeMonkey, who wonders what The Common Man thinks of Pete Rose being critical of A-Rod. For those who are unfamiliar, every time there is a sordid story in baseball, some reporter digs up Pete Rose's phone number, gets him to crawl out from under his rock and asks the disgraced hit-king who gambled on baseball even though the only unforgivable rule in baseball is that you don't bet on baseball what he has to say. Rose, in responding to A-Rod's press conference, told MLB.com that he doesn't believe A-Rod's explanation that he felt pressured and that he didn't know what substances he was taking. Also, MLB's Ed Eagle reports, "he's upset by what he perceives as a double-standard between himself and those who have used performance-enhancing drugs."

First, here's The Common Man's reaction to anything Pete Rose says: The Common Man does not care. Not in the least. Not one iota. The Common Man acknowledges that Pete Rose was a great player who always gave everything he had to the game he was playing. But by all accounts, Rose is a scumbag who lied for decades about gambling on baseball, and only 'fessed up when he thought a) baseball might let him back in and b) he could make a few million from a book deal.

Anything Rose has said in the past or will say in the future serves only to glorify Pete Rose. For instance, when he disputes A-Rod's claim that he felt enormous pressue to justify the $252 million contract he signed with the Rangers, Rose points out, "When I became a Philadelphia Phillie for the '79 season, I signed a contract that made me the highest paid player in any team sport. I didn't go to Philly with the pressure to hit .360 or .370. The only pressure you have is an obligation to the fans to play hard and bust your chops." First, there is no available salary data from Baseballreference.com to support Rose's claim that he was the highest paid athlete in any sport, but The Common Man will assume that this one fact from a serial liar is true. The rest of the statement simply serves to remind the people of how wonderful Rose believes he is, how he gave his all and bustedhis chops, and positions Rose as the central representative of a time when baseball was better, purer, than it is now. What Rose doesn't mention, of course, is baseball's growing drug problem and the rampant use of amphetamines. Also, he doesn't mention the different media climate today and the vast difference between the few hundred-thousand he probably made and the $25.2 million A-Rod made. Indeed, it's Rose's selective memory and constant self-promotion that make him so unreliable, and so uninteresting, to The Common Man. Because he's so transparent and shameless, The Common Man always knows exactly what card The Hit King is going to play.

For instance, this double standard he talks about. Rose argues, "I got caught, and I made a terrible mistake. Guys that are caught [using performance enhancing drugs], nothing happens to them [In terms of punishment by the game unless they did so after 2003]." But here's the big difference, the first rule every player learns about, the rule that is posted in every major league clubhouse, and the rule that has always carried with it baseball's version of the death penalty is the rule that Rose knowlingly, shamelessly, and repeatedly broke. Meanwhile, prior to 2003, there were no consequences for testing positive for steroids, and no testing procedures to catch them. Steroids were tacitly approved by baseball, and were considered a minor offense, whereas gambling on the game has been the worst crime a player could commit since 1919. But Rose knows it's in his best interest to conflate his offenses with those of Bonds, A-Rod, Clemens, Palmeiro, and McGwire, because if they can be forgiven then he can too (which is why he argues they should be elected to the Hall of Fame as well).

Rose isn't necessarily a broken record. But he's that band that keeps putting out one song after another that sounds almost alike. He's Nickelback or Daughtry. And rather than listen to another crappy rock song, The Common Man mentally changes the channel when Rose starts talking. The A-Rod scandal is seedy enough without Rose and his Dorothy Hamill hair crawling out from his rock to piss in baseball's Cheerios further. That's what The Common Man thinks.