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Originally Posted by steve B
Does everyone in the hobby that supports Rose forget the shady stuff he did hobbywise? Stuff that comes very close to fraud if not being fraud and sometimes only because it's so hard to prove?
Selling loads of game used bats - Sketchy when he was using a new bat for what seemed like every pitch. Not illegal, but still a little questionable for the era.
Selling multiple bats from the same milestone hit. - Hard to prove he did that, harder still to prove that's exactly what he claimed at the time. sort of dueling stories, and the buyers could have been interpreting his claims. Sort of "this bat is from the at bat where I got the hit" which gets taken as "this is the bat I got the hit with" In the buyers mind - instead of the more truthful "this is the bat I hit the foul with a couple pitches before" (Not sure of the exact at bats/hits , just a for instance)
He did some other stuff too. I'd have to really dig for the old magazines that have the details.
As for Jackson, I agree that taking the money and playing well but keeping quiet is wrong, and I'm confident in thinking that Landis viewed it as being just as bad. Plus, as others have pointed out, there's a lot of subtle stuff a great athlete could do that wouldn't be obvious from the stats. While it might be trackable now with the video all teams have of other teams in detail. At the time there was no way to track stuff like not getting a good jump on maybe one particular ball so it falls in, or not taking a base, or taking a strike in a certain situation.
Steve B
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All that stuff has NOTHING to do with what he accomplished on the field without any help. Who cares if he sold bats..how does that affect anything he did as a player? The HOF is based on numbers and what you accomplished as a player. The bat issues can be dealt in another way. He deserves to be in no question about it