Now Trump has gone too far . . . siding with Pete Rose

It's certainly not as important as what he says about immigration or terrorism, and I wouldn't even say it's a disqualifier, but when I saw this I got that twinge people feel when they say Trump just shoots from the hip on issues and doesn't really know what he's talking about:

Can't believe Major League Baseball just rejected @PeteRose_14 for the Hall of Fame. He's paid the price. So ridiculous - let him in! -- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 14, 2015

If you're not a baseball person - and I'll be honest, I'm much more a baseball person than I will ever be a political person - you might not have heard this news nor cared about it, but Pete Rose's latest application for reinstatement from the lifetime ban he incurred in 1989 for betting on baseball was rejected yesterday. And current Commissioner Rob Manfred didn't just reject Rose. He xxxxslapped him, hard:

"Mr. Rose has not presented credible evidence of a reconfigured life either by an honest acceptance by him of his wrongdoing, so clearly established by the Dowd Report, or by a rigorous, self-aware and sustained program of avoidance by him of the circumstances that led to his permanent eligibility in 1989. Absent such credible evidence, allowing him to work in the game presents an unacceptable risk of a future violation by him of Rule 21, and thus to the integrity of our sport," Manfred wrote. . . . "I believe that, at a minimum, there must be objective evidence which demonstrates that the applicant has fundamentally changed his life and that, based on such changes, the applicant does not pose a risk for violating Rule 21 in the future," Manfred wrote. "What has been presented to me for consideration falls well short of these requirements. It is not at all clear to me that Mr. Rose has a grasp of the scope of his violations of Rule 21. He claims not to remember significant misconduct detailed in the Dowd Report and corroborated by Michael Bertolini's betting notebook." The latter is a reference to the notebook of a Rose associate that the Commissioner's Office obtained after the publication of an ESPN report on June 23, 2015, which appeared to show that he had bet on the Reds as an active player in 1985 and 1986. Rose has admitted only to wagering on the team after becoming the manager. "He made assertions concerning his betting habits that were directly contradicted by documentary evidence. ... And, significantly, he told me that currently he bets recreationally and legally on horses and sports, including Baseball," Manfred wrote.

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Anyone who follows baseball and is familiar with the Rose case could have seen this result coming. Ever since his banishment 26 years ago, Rose has not only lied in the face of clear evidence against him - only to admit things when he absolutely had no choice - but he was more than willing to attack the integrity of people like John Dowd who did the hard work of compiling the facts that proved his actions. Now about Trump's statement: The most important thing to note here is that Manfred's decision was not about the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame is a separate entity from Major League Baseball, and it's their choice entirely to refuse entrance to anyone on MLB's ineligible list. In fact, Manfred made a point of addressing that issue in his statement:

He wrote: "It is not part of my authority of responsibility here to make any determination concerning Mr. Rose's eligibility as a candidate for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In fact, in my view, the considerations that should drive a decision on whether an individual should be allowed to work in Baseball are not the same as those that should drive a decision on Hall of Fame eligibility. ... Thus, any debate over Mr. Rose's eligibility for the Hall of Fame is one that must take place in a different forum."

In other words, it wouldn't bother Manfred a bit if the Hall of Fame considered changing its criterion and putting Rose on the ballot in spite of his banishment from MLB, but Manfred isn't about to let Rose return to MLB - and risk more corruption of the game - just so Rose can get into the Hall of Fame. If Rose's Hall credentials are judged solely on his performance on the field, it's obviously not even close. As baseball's all-time career leader in hits, he gets in. Easily. But the Hall is a private organization that makes its own rules, and that's not Rob Manfred's concern. His priority has to be protecting the integrity of Major League Baseball. So strike one on Trump is his failure to understand that this ruling was not about Rose getting into the Hall of Fame. Strike two is his repeating of the well-worn nonsense that Rose has "paid the price" for his actions. You hear this a lot from people who think it's a shame that baseball's all-time hits leader isn't in the Hall of Fame, and now that he's 74 they figure it's time to cut the guy a break and let him in - both to the Hall and to baseball. But he hasn't paid the price, and it's not time. The proscribed penalty for betting on baseball is permanent ineligibility - a lifetime ban. That means exactly what it means. It does not mean until we all kind of feel like it's enough already. Rose knew the penalty when he bet on the very Reds games he was both playing in and managing, and when he lied about the fact that he was doing so. The penalty is that harsh because the crime is that serious. Even if it were true that Rose only bet on the Reds to win, it would still compromise the integrity of the game because it would be easy for gamblers to predict the Reds' outcomes by paying attention to when Rose refrained from betting. (Which is not to say I believe him, just that even if this was the truth it wouldn't get him off the hook.) Maybe the casino guy in Trump feels some natural sympathy for the betting man Rose, or maybe Trump just figures this is the sort of populist statement that's brought him to the top of the polls. But Rob Manfred did the right thing for the right reasons, and Pete Rose's problems are entirely of his own making. If this is the way Donald Trump views justice, I'd have to question his judgment and how he would employ it as president. Generally speaking I do not share the media's overwrought disdain for Trump - particularly the suggestions of late that he's some sort of fascist. I'd like to see more candidates take seriously the need to prevent criminals from Mexico and terrorists from the Middle East from entering this country. But on the charge that he sometimes speaks before he thinks, I have to say he's guilty on the matter of Pete Rose.