If there is one compliment that you can give Pete Rose without feeling the need to rinse your soul out with Listerine, it is that he has consistently kept the world informed about how unattractive a human being he really is. There are plenty of celebrities who act one way in public and another in private. Rose? He’s never paid much attention to his surroundings. From his infamous on-field push of umpire Dave Pallone to his long list of off-the-field transgressions (illegal gambling, tax evasion, etc.), Rose has always made it perfectly clear to anybody with an ethical pulse that he was, is, and will continue to be a bona fide and unapologetic jerk.
All of this brings us to an important philosophical question that the Phillies should be asking themselves after Rose spent his Sunday embarrassing himself and everybody in the organization who thought it was a good idea to include him in their celebration of of the 1980 world championship team. When a jerk acts like a jerk, is it entirely his fault? Or does the blame fall partly on those who thought he might act another way?
Maybe that sounds like a leading question, but that’s the point. There’s only one direction things could have gone. The idea that Rose’s appearance in Philadelphia would be some sort of celebratory triumph completely ignored the notion that his absence might have been due in part to the fact that he was not someone who was pleasant to have around. By the end of Sunday’s proceedings, that inconvenient truth was no longer possible to ignore.
