Randy Smith: MLB Does The Right Thing....Finally

Major League Baseball announced this week that the life-time bans on Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson are being lifted, making both men eligible for induction into Baseball's Hall of Fame. There is no guarantee either men  will be inducted but at least they're now on the ballot. Shoeless Joe was banned in 1921 by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis along with seven of Jackson's White Sox teammates for attempting to throw the 1919 World Series. A trial acquitted them, but Landis decided to ban them from baseball anyway. Jackson passed away in 1951, as he lived in poverty in Marion County, TN. As for Pete Rose, his reinstatement comes eight months after his death and sadly, both men died never knowing they had been reinstated to baseball.

This should have happened long ago. Obviously I never had a chance to watch Shoeless Joe play but I saw Rose play many times....in person and on television and there is no question he was one of the all-time greats. His record of 4,256 base hits is a record that may never be broken. He won three World Series rings and perhaps the most impressive record Rose owns is this one: His regular season wins total of more than 1,900 is more than any athlete in any sport. If anyone ever deserved to be a Hall of Famer, it's Pete Rose.

As for Joe Jackson, his reinstatement comes 74 years after his death and 104 years after being banned. You mean to tell me that no one could have reinstated him in 104 years? It's bad enough that he never knew he was reinstated but his children and other family members are also no longer around. And now attention turns to other players like Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Roger Clemens. Players who have great stats but are not eligible because of steroid use.

I've softened my stance on those guys over the years, though I still consider their use of illegal substances to be cheating. It really makes you appreciate a player like the Yankee's Aaron Judge who is putting up gaudy numbers like no one player has ever done, without steroids. The number of baseball players banned is more than all other sports combined and that's a sad commentary. At least in 2025, there is a movement to do the right thing.....to judge a player's worth by what he accomplished on the field rather than things he did off it. I'm sure there will be folks who disagree with me, that those athletes should never be enshrined in the Hall of Fame but in our polarizing society today it should be expected.