On Christmas mornings in the Ott household in the early 1980s, it was a common occurrence for me to unwrap the obviously book-shaped gift and see some form of the baseball record book staring back at me.
These volumes became my companion through the long winter months, and while I wasn’t so devoted as to read them front-to-back, I would fixate on the same sections, as if rereading a favorite passage from a novel, to reinforce the greatness of the players I already knew to be great.
Ty Cobb. Babe Ruth. Walter Johnson. Hank Aaron. These icons would appear over and over again in the categories that most roused my interest, from batting average to home runs, RBI, wins, total bases and shutouts.
Such fixation would allow me to form my own narratives about the rankings of my favorites from this statistical sea of stars. Sure, Christy Mathewson didn’t have as many lifetime wins as Cy Young or Johnson, but that superb .665 winning percentage pushed him ahead for all-time supremacy. And maybe Ted Williams didn’t quite have the lifetime number volumes to match that sparkling .344 average, but hell, he missed five years for wartime service. Surely he was better than Stan Musial!
There was another name that frequently appeared on the sections I kept revisiting. Even in 1983 or so, before his career was finished, Pete Rose could be found among the luminaries near the top of several categories, including games, at-bats, runs, doubles and, of course, hits. He entered 1984 just shy of 4,000 knocks, leaving him with a realistic shot at someday toppling Cobb’s total of 4,191 which, along with Young’s 511 wins and the Bambino’s 60 home runs from 1927, then stood as the towering statistical monuments of the sport.
I remember finding out when Rose finally did the deed in September 1985. I had just descended the hill across the street from my school, early in fifth grade, and spied the old vending machine with its USA Today copies stuffed behind the metal bars. “Rose 4,192: Bye-bye Ty,” blared the headline, with a photo of the newly crowned hit king framed to have him pointing at the subhead of “There goes the record.”
Another prominent name from the record books stood out not because of the frequency of its appearances, but because of the lack of an asterisk beside it denoting Hall of Fame status. While again the impressive counting totals weren’t there due to a relatively short career, it was hard to miss Joe Jackson’s .356 batting average, behind only Cobb and Rogers Hornsby.
Jackson and Rose, of course, are permanently intertwined beyond any neighboring spots on the all-time lists, as two of the greats who were barred from Major League Baseball for gambling-related incidents and now have returned to the headlines after receiving posthumous reinstatement courtesy of Commissioner Rob Manfred.
It’s a ground-shaking shift felt across a season that otherwise again had us marveling at the godly gifts of Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, and reopened old wounds about whether the tainted legends deserved to have their permanent sentences lifted and a major obstacle removed in the path to the plaque gallery of Cooperstown.
The cases for the two certainly aren’t identical. Jackson was banished for accepting $5,000 from gamblers as part of the infamous 1919 Black Sox World Series scandal, while Rose was found to have bet on baseball while playing for and managing the Reds. Rose’s path for induction into the Hall is probably also a little thornier, with those who pay closer attention to the character clause sure to note his longtime refusal to confess, his imprisonment for tax evasion and allegations of sexual relations with a minor.
But those are perhaps minor details for fans who prefer to focus on the excellence exhibited on the field, with the memories they generate, and the two shared a healthy show of support even as they wallowed in baseball purgatory. Jackson, already painted as a reluctant participant in the Black Sox brouhaha, was revived as a sage (and right-handed-hitting) ghost who glided in and out of a cornfield in the 1989 baseball flick Field of Dreams. And Rose received a rousing ovation at Turner Field before Game 2 of the 1999 World Series as part of festivities for the All-Century Team, before later surfacing as an analyst for FOX baseball coverage.
There’s a danger that comes with diminishing the seriousness of their actions, no matter how much we want to link these players to checkpoints of our precious life journeys. Whether he was roped into doing it, felt bad about it or tried to come clean to the commissioner afterward, Jackson accepted money to undermine his team’s chances in the World Series. And Rose repeatedly bet on the sport he was involved in, an unquestioned no-no even if MLB now unabashedly partners with gambling companies like FanDuel.
But should they be banished in perpetuity, left to forever dangle in baseball’s crosswinds like the body of a hanged pirate or political radical as a warning to anyone who dared repeat such crimes?
Forever is a mighty long time, as Prince once told us, and I think these two paid enough of a price to remain standing as Exhibits A and B of the dangers of getting too closely involved with gambling endeavors. Jackson was exiled from the game when he was in his young 30s and denied the chance to compile numbers that may have at least approached Cobb’s as the gold standard of the era. And while Rose was occasionally allowed to MLB-sanctioned events, he never got another chance to manage, never felt the satisfaction of reinstatement despite repeated public attempts and had to watch lesser players get inducted into the Hall for the remainder of his years.
One more note about the record books: The numbers I see now look a bit different than the ones I remember in The Sporting News and the other guides from back in the day. Hack Wilson’s stratospheric 190 RBIs from 1930 has been given another nudge up to 191. Johnson has had another win tacked on to his old total of 416. And while MLB continues to list Cobb with that once-unassailable mark of 4,191 hits, Baseball Reference has shrunk his collection to a less visually pleasing 4,189.
Even the old records, the bedrock of measuring the accomplishments of every player who set foot on a Major League field, are apparently subject to change. And so it goes with the longstanding precedent that punishment for sins committed against baseball in one’s lifetime should carry over to the grave.
Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.
Tim Ott
Tim's early yearnings for baseball immortality began on the dirt and grass of the P.S. 81 ballfield in the Bronx. Although a Hall of Fame career was not in the cards, his penchant for reading the MLB record book and volumes of history tomes led to an internship with MLB.com in 2002. Tim fulfilled an array of roles over the next nine years at the company, from editorial game producer to fantasy writer and editor and reporter for MLB-related promotions. While a busy freelance writing career has since taken him in other directions, Tim has always kept baseball in his heart, and is happy to be back to observing and reflecting on our great pastime.