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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Report: Pete Rose reinstated. A talk with one of the writers who broke the story. Plus: Jeremy Shockey's latest homophobic episode.
Aug 12, 2003 | The baseball analysis Web site Baseball Prospectus reported Monday that Pete Rose and Major League Baseball had reached an agreement that would allow the banned all-time hits leader to return to the game next year.
In a statement, Major League Baseball denied the report, calling it "journalistically irresponsible." Chief operating officer Bob DuPuy called the Baseball Prospectus story "unsubstantiated and totally unfounded. The report is wholly inaccurate." The Web site issued a statement standing by its story.
The article, written by Derek Zumsteg and Will Carroll and based on "reliable sources," says that baseball will remove Rose from the permanently ineligible list, which would make him eligible for election into the Hall of Fame. Rose agreed to be placed on the ineligible list in 1989 for conduct detrimental to the sport. Baseball had been investigating allegations that Rose bet on baseball, which he continues to deny. The 1989 agreement did not include a finding by baseball or an admission by Rose that he bet on baseball.
Baseball Prospectus, which ordinarily runs articles offering sophisticated statistical analysis of baseball, reports that Rose's new agreement was struck after a series of meetings last offseason involving Rose, his agent, Warren Greene, commissioner Bud Selig, DuPuy and Mike Schmidt, a former teammate who lobbied for Rose in his own Hall of Fame acceptance speech in 1995.
The new agreement would allow Rose to work for a major league club in 2004, though not in any job involving day-to-day operations, according to Baseball Prospectus. He would be allowed to hold any job, including manager, starting in 2005. The Cincinnati Reds are rumored to want to rehire Rose as their skipper. He managed the club from 1984 until his banishment, and he has expressed interest in managing again.
Baseball fans will probably argue forever about whether Rose bet on games or not, and if so whether he bet on his own team. There's also probably no end to the arguments about whether reinstating him, putting him in the Hall of Fame or allowing him to manage are good or bad things. But fans have shown in poll after poll, and in their reaction to Rose at his rare appearances at baseball events, that reinstating him would be a popular move.
It would also create buzz, whenever Rose makes his return, and buzz sells tickets and increases TV ratings. Baseball has rarely shied away from anything that does those things. With nothing to go on but the Baseball Prospectus story and baseball's denial, I believe the story.
I talked to Will Carroll, one of the story's authors, Monday morning. Carroll and writer Joe Sheehan are full-time employees of Baseball Prospectus. The other writers, including Zumsteg, "have day jobs," Carroll says.
Baseball Prospectus had an April Fool's story this year praising Bud Selig. They're arguing on the Baseball Primer bulletin boards about whether this is a joke too
It's not a joke.
Who are your sources? I know you can't name names.
I've got a source in Cincinnati, in the Reds organization, a source in the MLB offices and an independent outside-baseball source. We've been following this one since about Saturday. And then when Pete Rose said he had a deal in place, kind of hinted at it in "Sunday Night Conversation" on ESPN, we really went after it whole hog.
When is this deal going to go down?
The deal is already signed. It evidently was signed back in November.
What have they been waiting for?
They're not going to announce it, supposedly -- this was the original plan -- until after the World Series, before the winter meetings, sometime in that time frame. You figure they'd try to avoid [announcing it at the same time they're announcing] the major awards. When Selig, Schmidt and Rose met in Chicago in November, everything was pretty much set. There was a later meeting between Rose, Warren Green, his agent, and Bob DuPuy, and evidently that's where the agreement was put down on paper.
Assuming you got it right, what does breaking this story mean for your site?
I don't know. I'm reasonably new at Prospectus. It was just too good a story to pass up. Obviously we're not a news-breaking organization normally. There was a lot of debate [Sunday], saying, "We've got this information, what the heck do we do with it? How sure are we?" The editors vetted all the information. We went through about 50 different edits. It was just too good to pass up. I'm not one of the statistically oriented guys. I cover injuries, and there aren't really stats on injuries, so I talk to a lot of trainers and front-office personnel, so I've been one of the first ones that most of my work is based on source information, so I hear a lot more things, and that's really where this came up. I was actually trying to cover a waiver-wire story.
