LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- It used to be that breaking the rules got you banished. Increasingly, it just seems to mean you were ahead of your time.
Pete Rose has been reinstated to Major League Baseball. Not because he changed but because the game and society around him did. All Rose ever had to do during his lifetime to receive reinstatement was show some contrition and stop flaunting the rules that he broke. That wasn't going to happen — not while he was still alive.
So he lived for decades outside the lines — banned for betting on baseball games while managing the Cincinnati Reds. He was told the door back in would open with three simple steps: contrition, confession and rehabilitation. He managed, in some ways, the first two. The third he never did. He didn't want forgiveness. He wanted vindication.
Baseball didn't budge. It stood on principle. And, for a time, that principle mattered.
But that time has passed.
This is no longer the game that drew a red line at gambling. That game is now sponsored by FanDuel. It's partnered with DraftKings. It's busy building betting windows into the ballpark experience. It's not just flirting with gambling — it's in bed with it, watching the over/under scroll across the headboard.
And, perhaps, it is a game that reacted to political headwinds. President Donald Trump was signaling a pardon for Rose, who was a topic of conversation when Trump and baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred met last month.
Baseball may not have needed a political nudge — but it sure didn't ignore one.
So Rose returns not because the punishment no longer fits the crime but because the crime somehow no longer offends the way it once did — or at least because minimizing it seems now the expedient thing. The rules didn't change. The culture did.
It hasn't been long ago that I wrote that we live in a "post-rules world," and as such, if past actions are no longer reason to sanction past accomplishments, the University of Louisville's 2013 NCAA championship banner and other program records should be restored.
Both rulings — the vacation of the title and baseball's lifetime ban — were statements of institutional values.
But we don't really do values anymore.
We do vibes. We do business. We do deals. We do what we can defend in a press release. The rules? They're negotiable.
I don't have to tell you that. You can read the news and see long-held norms, principles, even laws, tossed aside with little regard.
That's the post-rules world. And Rose finally fits in it.
We shouldn't forget: Rose always had the power to come back. And I say this as a guy who loved Rose as much as anyone. I still had a poster of Rose's historic swing, hit No. 4,190, on my wall when I left home for college. We're a forgiving society. Many who loved Rose had already forgiven him anyway, even without any outward signs of remorse on his part. You can count me among that group.
The fan in me feels like all Rose fans. I'm glad that he'll one day, surely, be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and wish it had happened while he was alive. But there's more to life than fandom. And life, in fact, is larger than our allegiances.
A guy I revered just as much, Johnny Bench, often said, "Pete knew the rules." And he was right. And he was among many who tried to get Rose to bring his life into line with a road to reinstatement.
Nobody succeeded. Rose never softened. And time, eventually, runs out on us all.
Baseball didn't soften, either. It recalculated. It decided it could live with the optics. It always had the power to bring him back. It just didn't want to until now.
That tells you everything about where the game — and the culture around it — is going.
Quick sips
- Donovan Mitchell and the No. 1 seed Cleveland Cavaliers have been eliminated from the NBA Playoffs by a surging Indiana team. And Mitchell is sure to come in for some scrutiny. In eight seasons, he hasn't been past the second round. You can't put this exit on him. He averaged better than 34 points per game on a bad ankle. Still, it raises questions, and Jason Lloyd of The Athletic does a good job exploring them.
- Kentucky coach Mark Pope sat down with reporters Tuesday to talk about his 2025-26 team. By my count, he used the word "beautiful" eight times. More to come on that discussion in a later story today. His takeaway quote: “We want to play the best schedule. We want to win the most games. We want to have the best players. Want to have the highest NIL. We have the coolest uniforms. ... We should be the best at everything.”
The Last Drop
"Wouldn't it be horrible if I died next week and they put me in the Hall of Fame next year? That's happened to a lot of people. They forgive them when they die."
- Pete Rose, HBO Sports Documentary, "Charlie Hustle and the Matter of Pete Rose"
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