The story is here.

To summarize for those new to this story and its various issues:

Because the 1919 World Series fixing scandal nearly toppled the sport, any player, manager or coach who bets on baseball games will be automatically banned from the game for life and from the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame for perpetuity. Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader as a player and a certain Hall of Fame admittee under normal circumstances, was shown to have bet on baseball while a manager, after his playing career. For many years he lied, denying that this was true, then came clean in time to hawk his autobiography.

Rose has always had a lot of sympathy from fans and players, in part because he was such an exciting player, in part because he played with the innocent enthusiasm of a child and  he is a child, at least emotionally, and mostly because it was believed, since Rose insisted that it was true—yes, I know that sounds strange, given Rose’s record of serial dishonesty—that he never gambled on baseball while he was a player.

This season, public sentiment had been building to finally pronounce Rose forgiven. He had even progressed to the stage that some advertisers were using him in TV commercials. Baseball has a new Commissioner, and he had signaled that he would give Rose’s long-standing and ignored petition for reinstatement due consideration.

All of that is gone now, presumably forever.

Some last thoughts on Rose, as with any luck this is the last occasion I will have to write about him:

1. Rose really is an idiot. He maintained his charade despite knowing that law enforcement knew about his betting while he was a player, gambling–he is a compulsive gambler after all—that it would never come to light. If he had just admitted everything he had done in violation of baseball’s rules long ago, apologized sincerely, and set about doing something positive for the game, kids, the community, anyone but his favorite cause, Pete Rose, he would have some shred of dignity now. The sad truth is that Rose doesn’t care about anyone but himself, and because of that, can’t serve his own interests either. Such is the eternal irony of the unethical.

2. Rose has had so many loyal supporters and defenders who have argued that he has been excessively punished for one mistake that shouldn’t affect his legacy as a player. There have been petitions and letter writing campaigns. Rose let this go on, knowing it was based on a lie and that he was turning good if gullible people into his unwitting accomplices. He betrayed his fans when he broke baseball’s one unbreakable law, and he betrayed them again with his lies. If there was a Jerk Hall of Fame, Pete would have a special exhibit.

3. Pete Rose still doesn’t get it. It’s all a con to him; truth, trust and honesty mean nothing, literally nothing, in his world view. That he was a great baseball player and a miserable human being would not disqualify him from being honored for the former, had not his absence of good character actively harmed the game itself. Pete doesn’t comprehend this either.

4. Rose deserves extra condemnation because he would have weakened MLB’s effective tool of deterrence against gambling by players had he managed to acquire a pardon on false pretenses. Absolute punishments work as deterrence, if they are absolute, unavoidable and without exceptions. The fact that baseball would ban its all-time hit leader and one of its most popular superstars sends a powerful message that The King’s Pass will not allow a fan favorite to escape justice. Rose worked for decades to degrade that message.

4. It will be interesting to see if he has any prominent, passionate, non-institutionalized defenders left after this. My guess is that there will be some.

5. Rose’s final disgrace is not good news for baseball’s steroid cheats, who were poised to use the slippery slope of Rose’s forgiveness by baseball to slip into the Hall of Fame and stink it up forever. They may succeed yet, but that route is now closed forever. Good.

6. Pete Rose was my first Ethics Dunce, in 2004, and my first and only Ethics Dunce Emeritus, in 2007. Can I pick em, or can I pick ’em?

7. Finally, the saga of Pete Rose’s decades-long deception should give pause to those who are poised to trust the likes of Brian Williams and Hillary Clinton. Liars don’t stop lying. Some are just better at it than others.

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Pointer: Craig Calcaterra