How Pete Rose Hustled Himself Out of Baseball

 

                                     Charley Hustle making the wrong kind of headlines. 

On August 24, 1989 Pete Rose aka Charlie Hustle was banned from Major League Baseball (MLB) for life for gambling on Cincinnati Reds games while he was manager by an outraged Commissioner of Baseball Bart Giamatti.

Considered a shoo-in for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot, Rose probably doomed his chances for ever being included by for years steadfastly denying gambling on baseball despite mounting evidence, before sheepishly admitting guilt in his autobiography My Prison Without Bars.  

 

                                                      Rose's rookie card still a hot commodity for collectors in mint condition.

Rose was a hometown product of Cincinnati, born to working class parents in 1941.  The switch hitting right hander’s dream came true when he was called to the Big Show in 1963. In his stellar 23 year career as a player, most of the time with the Reds, Rose hit for a .303 batting average, tallied 4,256 hits including 160 home runs and drove in a total of 1,394 runs.  He was famously aggressive on the base paths despite not being a fast runner and perfected a dangerous head-first slide. 

Among his many honors were Rookie of the Year in the National League in 1963, two Gold Gloves for his sparkling defensive play, three batting titles, 17 All Star Game appearances, and three World Championships with Cincinnati’s legendary Big Red Machine.  After playing for the Philadelphia Phillies and Montreal Expos from 1979 to ’84, controversial Reds owner Marge Schott brought Rose back as a player-manager to finish the ’84 season.  

 

Rose's signature head-first dive into base made him one of the most exciting players in baseball. 

He played two more years in the combined role before retiring to concentrate on his bench duties.  He was undoubtedly the most popular player in Reds history and one of the most admired in baseball. 

But Rose was an inveterate gambler.  He claimed his regular bets with a major bookie did not include baseball, then after proof surfaced, that he did not bet on games he was part of.  When that claim, too, was disproven, he could only say that he bet for his team, not against it.  

 

Rose as Reds manager. 

But gambling is the big no-no in Major League Base which was nearly killed by scandals in the 19th Century and again by the Black Sox scandal of 1919.  Baseball ignored a lot of misbehavior, including the nearly murderous attacks of Ty Cobb on fans, regular alcohol abuse by stars like Babe Ruth, and numerous instances of sexual peccadilloes.  It would not, however, forgive gambling. 

After his banishment Rose cut a pathetic figure.  Banned from even setting foot into a ball park, he made his living signing autographs and selling memorabilia.  Even that got him into trouble.  On April 20, 1990, Rose pleaded guilty to two charges of filing false income tax returns for not reporting income from selling autographs and memorabilia, and from horse racing winnings. He was sentenced to five months in the medium security Prison Camp at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois and fined $50,000. Released on January 7, 1991 after having paid $366,041 in back taxes and interest he was required to perform 1000 hours of community service.  

 

Rose would sign anything for a buck, including humiliating admissions. 

Rose’s 2004 autobiography was an attempt to both bring in much needed income and rehabilitate his reputation, possibly leading to a lifting of the lifelong ban and eligibility for the Hall of Fame.  Despite the vocal support of many players and some sportswriters, the book failed on the later count.

The steroid scandals of the early 21st Century were used by supporters to argue that Rose, who never used performance enhancing drugs and who played hard his entire career, deserved consideration to be included in the Hall while disgraced players like Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens remained eligible. 

Baseball is officially un-moved by these arguments. After rumors that he was considering lifting the ban surfaced in 2010, Commissioner Bud Selig quickly denied the reports.  Selig’s successor seemed to be no more sympathetic and many of the sportswriters who admired and championed him have retired.  Baseball moved on. 

Rose died still in disgrace on September 30, 2024 in Las Vegas.  The next January his daughter Fawn Rose and Rose family attorney officially filed documents to remove her father from the Permanently Ineligible List.  In February President Donald Trump put his heavy thumb on the scale and posted on Truth Social that he would give Rose a posthumous pardon and criticized MLB and the Baseball Writers Association over Rose’s ban, calling for reinstatement and an induction into the Hall of Fame.  Commissioner Rob Manfred  met with Trump in April and confirmed that Rose and his lifetime ban was among the topics discussed then On May 13 Manfred instituted a change regarding permanent ineligibility, making it so all bans expire after death of the person on the list.  

 

Pete Rose's daughter Fawn addressed the the crowd at packed Great American Ballpark for a ceremony honoring her father and the unveiling of a commemorative plaque the day after his reinstatement.

Rose, like Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Black Sox scandal, can be considered for induction when the Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee  during the during the 2027 MLB Winter Meetings.  Ironically by then Trump’s support may be more of a drag than a boost if the Orange Menace himself and his MAGA minions are themselves turned out of power and disgraced.

Wanna place a bet on that?

 

The Feast of Saturnalia-A Roman Slave’s Carol— The Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2024-‘25

 

The Feast of Saturnalia--A Roman Slave's Carol is a festive tune from the Asholean Latin Inscriptions project and members of Oxford University Faculty of Classics. 

Today marks the first day of Saturnalia, the famously lascivious Roman harvest and solstice festival.  It was first celebrated on this date—accounting for a couple of changes of calendars—in 496 BC.  Saturnalia was the Roman Feast of Saturn, the god of Harvest, and a dies festus, a legal holiday when no public business could be conducted.  At various points during the Republic and Empire festivities extended over seven, three, and finally five days. 

For a long time, all I knew about Saturnalia was that when I was in Cheyenne East High School the Latin Club nerds plastered the school with posters reading Io Saturnalia! Which roughly translated to “way to go, big fella!” or something.  They also had a slave auction fundraiser in the lunchroom where leering gym teachers bought the comeliest girls and likeliest boys draped in their mothers’ bed sheets.  Kind of creepy, when you think about it.

Saturnalia cavorting in a Roman wall fresco. 

But as a student of all things religious, I have since learned a thing or two about it.

Saturnalia is just one of the many festivals common in Europe and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere around the period of the solstice.  Unlike others, it was a harvest festival, which seems strange until you remember that Rome not only had a pleasant Mediterranean climate but was in a period of historic warming prior the Little Ice Age, the onset of which helped plunge the continent into the Dark Ages.  But that’s another story.

                                                    Saturn Eating his Son by Fracisco Goya. 

The public ritual of the holiday was observed at the Temple of Saturn, one of the most important buildings in the Forum.  A lectisternium, a ceremonial couch, was set up before the Temple and the statue of Saturn was unbound—the rest of the year he was tied up because of his unfortunate habit of eating people.  He was depicted as a semi-depraved old man caring a harvesting scythe.  Christians would later adapt that image to Father Time associated with the celebration of the New Year.   A feast was laid out for the god before the couch so that he wouldn’t get hungry and revert to his nasty cannibalism.

The public ritual and spectacle aside what made Saturnalia especially popular with Roman plebeians and the large population of slaves were the carnival-like traditions.  Customs from the earlier Greek Festival of Dionysus—the Roman Bacchus—were incorporated into the celebrations.

Public cavorting and sexual hijinks were notorious features of Saturnalia in a painting by Ernesto Biodoni.  A good time was had by all.

Social norms of the rest of the year were set aside.  Private parties and public revelry were the order of the day.  Restrictions on gambling were loosened and even slaves could try their luck at games such as casting knuckle bones, many trying to win enough money to buy their freedom.   Exchanging small gifts—saturnalia et sigillaricia—either made by hand or purchased at special holiday markets was a highlight.  Slaves were exempted from punishment by their masters, in theory at least.

The most telling was the turn-about feature of the celebration.  Slaves and common laborers were supposed to be served feasts by their masters and were free to express disrespect.  Sometimes complete role reversal was practiced.

A fresco of another popular Saturnalia tradition--gambling--was found in the buried ruins of Pompeii. 

With the rules of public decorum suspended, it was a very good time for wine merchants and public drunkenness was common.  So were sexual hi-jinks, including usually forbidden mixing among classes, master and slave.

After 250 AD Saturnalia was subsumed into the new Festival of Sol Invictus decreed by Emperor Aurelian in celebrations of a Sun cult.  The return of the sun on December 25 was a high point of the multi day celebration.  Although the original Saturnalia ended before that date a confusion about the two Roman holidays led to the popular misconception that the early Church "stole" December 25 for it celebration of the birth of Christ.

Around 250 AD Emperor Aurelian created the new official cult of Sol Invictus, a Sun deity which may have borrowed from the Persian warrior cult of Mithra, ans celebrated the return of the Sun on December 25, just after the conclusion of Saturnalia.

This led to the often told tale is that the early Christians, still persecuted, hid their celebration of the Feast of the Nativity during Saturnalia to avoid detection.  The trouble was that the date for that celebration was not yet fixed.  In fact, it was often celebrated in the Spring—the lambing season when shepherds would have been in the fields on the lookout for wolves.  Even when Christmas was settled on December 25, it was two days after the customary end of Saturnalia but did coincide with the feast of Sol Invictus.  Later Emperors began to suppress the Sun festival with the rise of Christianity, around 390 AD.  The first written reference to a festival of Natalis Invicti was the Philocalian calendar of 354.  But a spring celebration of the nativity persisted more generally for another 100 years by which time the Festival of Sol Invictus was banned and reduced to a rural folk celebration.  

The early Church did seem to want to mount a feast or festival that competed with the pagan solstice festivals and to which locals could adapt some of their beloved customs.  At the same time, the Church went through periods of vigorously trying to stamp out vestiges of those same pagan festivals.  For this reason, the exchange of gifts was outlawed through much of the early Middle Ages.

But customs did persist.  Although most of the trapping of Christmas were borrowed from the Nordic Yule, Celtic, and Druidic customs, the cultural influence of Rome’s long occupation of Britain can be seen in the carnival-like observation of Christmas there up to the Puritan era  which included the same role-reversals, public revelry, and drinking.  The vestiges of it can be seen on Boxing Day, when masters give presents to servants and often serve them meals on the day after Christmas. 

Today’s song, The Feast of Saturnalia–A Roman Slave’s Carol was created as a tongue-in-cheek joke by the scholarly Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions Project and members of Oxford University Faculty of Classics.

The Feast of Saturnalia-A Roman Slave’s Carol— The Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2022-‘23

The Feast of Saturnalia--A Roman Slave's Carol is a festive tune from the Asholean Latin Inscriptions project and members of Oxford University Faculty of Classics. 

Today marks the first day of Saturnalia, the famously lascivious Roman harvest and solstice festival.  It was first celebrated on this date—accounting for a couple of changes of calendars—in 496 BC.  Saturnalia was the Roman feast of Saturn, the god of Harvest, a dies festus, a legal holiday when no public business could be conducted.  At various points during the Republic and Empire festivities extended over seven, three, and finally five days.

For a long time, all I knew about Saturnalia was that when I was in Cheyenne East High School the Latin Club nerds plastered the school with posters reading Io Saturnalia! Which roughly translated to “way to go, big fella!” or something.  They also had a slave auction fundraiser in the lunchroom where leering gym teachers bought the comeliest girls and likeliest boys draped in their mothers’ bed sheets.  Kind of creepy, when you think about it.

Saturnalia cavorting in a Roman wall fresco.

But as a student of all things religious, I have since learned a thing or two about it.

Saturnalia is just one of the many festivals common in Europe and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere around the period of the solstice.  Unlike others, it is a harvest festival, which seems strange until you remember that Rome not only had a pleasant Mediterranean climate but was in a period of historic warming prior the Little Ice Age, the onset of which helped plunge the continent into the Dark Ages.  But that’s another story.

Saturn had an unfortunate habit of eating humans as depicted in this 1637 painting by Peter Paul Rubens.

The public ritual of the holiday was observed at the Temple of Saturn, one of the most important buildings in the Forum.  A lectisternium, a ceremonial couch, was set up before the Temple and the statue of Saturn was unbound—the rest of the year he was tied up because of his unfortunate habit of eating people.  He was depicted as a semi-depraved old man caring a harvesting scythe.  Christians would later adapt that image to Father Time associated with the celebration of the New Year.   A feast was laid out for the god before the couch so that he wouldn’t get hungry and revert to his nasty cannibalism.

The public ritual and spectacle aside what made Saturnalia especially popular with Roman plebeians and the large population of slaves were the carnival-like traditions.  Customs from the earlier Greek festival of Dionysus—the Roman Bacchus—were incorporated into the celebrations.

Public cavorting and sexual hijinks were notorious features of Saturnalia in a painting by Ernesto Biodoni.  A good time was had by all.

Social norms of the rest of the year were set aside.  Private parties and public revelry were the order of the day.  Restrictions on gambling were loosened and even slaves could try their luck at games such as casting knuckle bones, many trying to win enough money to buy their freedom.   Exchanging small gifts—saturnalia et sigillaricia—either made by hand or purchased at special holiday markets was a highlight.  Slaves were exempted from punishment by their masters, in theory at least.

The most telling was the turn-about feature of the celebration.  Slaves and common laborers were supposed to be served feasts by their masters and were free to express disrespect.  Sometimes complete role reversal was practiced.

A fresco of another popular Saturnalia tradition--gambling--was found in the buried ruins of Pompeii.

With the rules of public decorum suspended, it was a very good time for wine merchants and public drunkenness was common.  So were sexual hi-jinks, including usually forbidden mixing among classes, master and slave.

Around 250 AD Emperor Aurelian created the new official cult of Sol Invictus, a Sun deity which may have borrowed from the Persian warrior cult of Mithra, which celebrated the return of the Sun on December 25, just after the conclusion of Saturnalia.

After 250 AD Saturnalia was subsumed into the new Festival of Sol Invictus decreed by Emperor Aurelian in celebrations of a Sun cult.  The return of the sun on December 25 was a high point of the multi day celebration.  Although the original Saturnalia ended before that date a confusion about the two Roman holidays led to the popular misconception that the early Church "stole" December 25 for it celebration of the birth of Christ.

This led to the often told tale is that the early Christians, still persecuted, hid their celebration of the Feast of the Nativity during Saturnalia to avoid detection.  The trouble was that the date for that celebration was not yet fixed.  In fact, it was often celebrated in the Spring—the lambing season when shepherds would have been in the fields on the lookout for wolves. Even when Christmas was settled on December 25, it was two days after the customary end of Saturnalia but did coincide with the feast of Sol Invictus.  However later Emperors began to suppress the Sun festival with the rise of Christianity, around 390 AD.  The first written reference to a festival of Natalis Invicti was the Philocalian calendar of 354.  But a spring celebration of the nativity persisted more generally for another 100 years by which time the festival of Sol Invictus was banned and reduced to a rural folk celebration.   

The early church did seem to want to mount a feast or festival that competed with the various pagan solstice festivals and to which locals could adapt some of their beloved customs.  At the same time, the Church went through periods of vigorously trying to stamp out vestiges of those same pagan festivals.  For this reason, the exchange of gifts was outlawed through much of the early Middle Ages.

But customs did persist.  Although most of the trapping of Christmas were borrowed from the Nordic Yule, Celtic, and Druidic customs, the cultural influence of Rome’s long occupation of Britain can be seen in the carnival like observation of Christmas there up to the Puritan era   which included the same role-reversals, public revelry, and drinking.  The vestiges of it can be seen on Boxing Day, when masters give presents to servants and often serve them meals on the day after Christmas.

Today’s song, The Feast of Saturnalia–A Roman Slave’s Carol was created a tongue-in-cheek joke by the scholarly Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions Project and members of Oxford University Faculty of Classics.

 

Hustling Himself Out of Baseball—Pete Rose

Charley Hustle making the wrong kind of headlines.

Thirty years ago on August 24, 1989 Pete Rose aka Charlie Hustle was banned from baseball for life for gambling on Cincinnati Reds games when he was manager by an outraged Commissioner of Baseball Bart Giamatti.

Considered a shoe-in for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot, Rose probably doomed his chances for ever being included by for years steadfastly denying gambling on baseball despite mounting evidence, before sheepishly admitting guilt in his autobiography My Prison Without Bars.    

Rose's rookie card still a hot commodity for collectors in mint condition.

Rose was a home town product of Cincinnati, born to working class parents in 1941.  The switch hitting right hander’s dream came true when he was called to the Big Show in 1963. In his stellar 23 year career as a player, most of the time with the Reds, Rose hit for a .303 batting average, tallied 4,256 hits including 160 home runs and drove in a total of 1,394 runs.  He was famously aggressive on the base paths despite not being a fast runner and perfected a dangerous head-first slide.  

Among his many honors were Rookie of the Year in the National League in 1963, two Gold Gloves for his sparkling defensive play, three batting titles, 17 All Star Game appearances, and three World Championships with Cincinnati’s legendary Big Red Machine.  After playing for the Philadelphia Phillies and Montreal Expos from 1979 to ’84, controversial Reds owner Marge Schott brought Rose back as a player-manager to finish the ’84 season.  

Rose's signature head-first dive into base made him one of the most exciting players in baseball.

He played two more years in the combined role before retiring to concentrate on his bench duties.  He was undoubtedly the most popular player in Reds history and one of the most admired in baseball.  

But he was an inveterate gambler.  He claimed his regular bets with a major bookie did not include baseball, then after proof surfaced, that he did not bet on games he was part of.  When that claim, too, was disproven, he could only say that he bet for his team, not against it. 

Rose as Reds manager.

But gambling is the big no-no in Major League Base which was nearly killed by gambling scandals in the 19th Century and again by the Black Sox scandal of 1919.  Baseball ignored a lot of misbehavior, including the nearly murderous attacks of Ty Cobb on fans, regular alcohol abuse by stars like Babe Ruth, and numerous instances of sexual peccadilloes.  It would not, however, forgive gambling.  

After his banishment Rose cut a pathetic figure.  Banned from even setting foot into a ball park, he made his living signing autographs and selling memorabilia.  Even that got him into trouble.  On April 20, 1990, Rose pleaded guilty to two charges of filing false income tax returns for not reporting income from selling autographs and memorabilia, and from horse racing winnings. He was sentenced to five months in the medium security Prison Camp at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois and fined $50,000. Released on January 7, 1991 after having paid $366,041 in back taxes and interest he was required to perform 1000 hours of community service. 

Rose would sign anything for a buck, including humiliating admissions.

Rose’s 2004 autobiography was an attempt to both bring in much needed income and rehabilitate his reputation, possibly leading to a lifting of the lifelong ban and eligibility for the Hall of Fame.  Despite the vocal support of many players and some sportswriters, the book failed on the later count. 

The steroid scandals of the early 21st Century were used by supporters to argue that Rose, who never used performance enhancing drugs and who played hard his entire career, deserved consideration to be included in the Hall while disgraced players like Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Roger Clemens remain eligible.  

Rose flogging his autobiography, My Prison Without Bars.  The book flopped as a plea for sympathy and as a bid to regain eligibility for the Hall of Fame.

Baseball is officially un-moved by these arguments. After rumors that he was considering lifting the ban surfaced in 2010, Commissioner Bud Selig quickly denied the reports.  Selig’s successor has been no more sympathetic and many of the sportswriters who admired and championed him have retired.  Baseball has moved on.  It is doubtful Pete Rose will ever enter the Hall of Fame.