Here is a guy who hung around only to break a record... Look at his stats the last 5 years of his career.
Here is an argument why Pete may not really be a hall of famer The following comparison of Pete Rose to his long-time teammates: Bench, Morgan, Foster and Perez, shows that he was not in the top 3 players on his own team (and we're not even including the pitchers on his team such as Tom Seaver). To illustrate the point, batting records of their best single season, top 5 seasons, top 10 seasons and careers were compared. Their seasons were sorted by the following criteria to determine which is their "best." And, with exception of the "career" totals, no season with fewer than 400 plate appearances was included. The players were sorted by OPS (on base avg + slugging avg) and by Total Avg (TA=batting avg + slugging avg). Then, the rankings were averaged to determine the total combined ranking. After studying the table below, also consider the intangibles. While I don't consider Pete Rose a superior fielder, to his credit, he won 2 Gold Gloves as an outfielder. His teammates winning Gold Gloves, Bench who won 10 and Morgan who won 5, are in the Hall of Fame, Foster and Perez didn't win any and are not. As far as base running, if you use stolen bases as a measure, Rose was adequate, but not superior. To me, while he was fun to watch (I admit I was a big Reds fan) and longevity is a big factor, by most fundamental and widely accepted statistical measures, he just wasn't as obvious a choice for the Hall of Fame as some make it seem. Sorry Pete! Full article here: http://baseballguru.com/bbspot2.html
Optional you sound like a moron right now. Its one thing to debate wether a 17time all star should be kept out of the Hall of Fame based on the black cloud he left hovering over his career, but quite another to debate his right to be there based on what he accomplished on the field!
I'm done with this thread as there is no use in aruguing with fools, someone from a far may not be able to tell who's who.
The best you can do is call people names? Fascinating, I quote someone else's argument, and you call me a moron? Move along if you wish. Those who are able to debate points without personal attacks will continue.
That there is no way that current Commish Bud Selig can reinstate Rose if he is still placing bets! http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040110/ap_on_sp_ba_ne/bbo_rose_gambling_4
Quite frankly, anyone who thinks Pete Rose does not belong in the Hall of Fame based on his baseball stats is a baseball idiot. Because the mainstream media have picked up the Pete Rose story, I can see we have a lot of baseball idiot opinions running about. By comparing a pure average hitter with sluggers and using equal weighting of average and slugging percentage, of course the pure average hitter will come up short every time. But doing so is comparing apples and oranges. If some player had a lifefime batting average of .200 with a slugging average of .505, under the website's logic he would receive a superior ranking to a lifetime .300 average hitter with a .400 slugging percentage (which are just about Pete Rose's lifetime stats). It would be just as fair to say to the sluggers that they can't get into the Hall of Fame unless they have a lifetime .300 average or better, while the average hitters have to have a lifetime slugging average over .500 - making Cooperstown a ghost town. Look at Johnny Bench's lifetime batting average (.267) and lifetime slugging average (.476) versus Rose's lifetime batting average (.303) and slugging percentage (.409). While Bench's lifetime average isn't terrible for a baseball player, and darn good for a catcher, 36 points of average is a lot to give up average wise, but then saying the 67 points of slugging average is as important as the batting average is simply an assinine assumption! Slugging percentage is not an equivalent measure to batting average, or in other words, getting one point of batting average is not equivalently difficult to getting one point of slugging average. The web site compares apples and oranges so any conclusions it draws are also suspect. And since Pete Rose's last 5 year's average was about the same as Johnny Bench's career batting average, I can only reach the conclusion that while Pete Rose may have been a guy who hung around for 5 years only to break a record, Johnny Bench was just hanging around his whole career! No offence to Johnny Bench, one of the greatest catchers to ever play the game but this idiotic BS has just gone too far.
ROFL!! Hey Jem, are you still pissed about Rose kicking Bud Harrelson's ass on that slide into 2nd in the '73 NLCS! http://www.aasportscollectibles.com/roseharrelsonphoto.htm
Lol. Touchy, touchy zen-boy. I love it when you post crap like this. It screams loud and clear that that zen-like detachment you preach about is, with respect to you, an icecream like facade; melting with the slightest rise in temperature; you can't even pretend to treat a topic close to your heart disinterestedly. Very zen, lol. Next time, try clapping one hand over your mouth -- we'd all like the sound of that. It's obvious you haven an impossibly hard time handling opinions that differ from your own mushroom and Wu-Li inspired malarkey. I guess that's why it's true that if anyone has ever been self-righteous on ET it's you. Look, it won't make one iota of difference to my life whether Rose gets the Hall of Fame or the Hall of Shame. I had an opinion on the matter and I stated it. That's that. And I'll give you another one (if only to see if it riles you up as much as the first.) What "amazing accomplishments"? To me, they're meaningless. So are yours. I couldn't care less whether someone's devoted their lives to something. In and of itself, that feat doesn't garner any respect from me. Hitler devoted his life to a cause too. "Amazing accomplishments" are no substitute for character in my world. You can keep waxing lyrical about your precious little "game" (your trading). Means fuck all to me. You, on the other hand, you seem to think the world needs to bow down to you. So far I notice only Pabst is hooked. Good luck to you Commisso. I hope you can find happiness with that hollow philosophy of yours. Failing that, I guess there's always a bong handy.