Some thoughts on whether Pete Rose should be admitted to the Hall of Fame, thoughts sparked by commentator John Feinstein’s recent “Sports Minute” statement that maybe it was finally time, after 25 years of waiting, for Mr. Rose to be in the HOF.  This after Feinstein himself had previously spoken against the Rose admission.

Who still cares about the HOF, or even baseball itself?  As with bowling (43 million Americans bowled last year!), more people than you think.  Americans care about baseball, American baseball fans care about statistics and awards, and Americans care a lot about who gets into the HOF.  The Pete Rose case is a great argument-starter.

The updated Feinstein argument is that the man has suffered enough and is in his late innings.  That I am offended by this argument means, I guess, that I, too, am a baseball fan – even though I no longer live in a city with a ball park in which it is possible,  if one is not seated in a corporate luxury box or suite, to be close enough to the field to actually see the ball.  In other words, I live in neither Boston nor Chicago.

I bow to Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis,  appointed in 1920 as the first Commissioner of Baseball, whose job was to clean up baseball after it had been brought to near-ruin when professional gamblers succeeded in bribing the Chicago White Sox (the “Black Sox”) to throw the 1919 World Series.   Commissioner Landis banned the key ballplayers for life and instituted a strict set of new rules that made it clear that the penalty for players caught gambling on baseball games was the professional death penalty.  With a huge boost from the timely success and popularity of Babe Ruth, the game recovered and went into a boom that has never ended.  The judge was tough, but he saved baseball.

Pete Rose is baseball’s problem child – talented, feisty,  appealing, but a very bad boy.  Do we show him tough love?  Do we eventually forgive him?  Are we urban cowboys afraid of being too judgmental?  Are we concerned about setting an unwise precedent?   Do we care more about Mr. Rose, or about the game of baseball?

You have guessed where I am going.  Baseball was lucky to survive the steroids era.  It is losing ground to football and other sports.  It no longer attracts black players.  Its hold on the American sports dollar is no longer a sinecure.  Only corporations can afford to go to the games.   Short answer:  the sport is way more important than any player.  The gambling ban is baseball’s most important rule, and once you bend that rule or weaken the consequences of violating that rule, you invite your own demise.  Mr. Rose may be a changed man, even a charming one (though I doubt it), but I do not care.  I care about baseball.  Thumbs down.

“I’ve never played an entire tournament with my ‘A’ game.  This week, I came pretty close . . . “  (Tiger Woods, in his Butler Cabin interview after winning his first Masters in 1997.)

Thought I would lay that quote out there, just as one final reminder of who Tiger Woods is, just to indicate how relieved I am to know that now, with the excellence of Rory McIlroy and the magical arrival of Jordan Spieth, we can move on.   From Day One, Woods has been an obnoxious boor, a one-dimensional talent so devoid of character, modesty, humility, and grace that the best way to watch him was to turn off the sound.  It was not just the intimidation, the abuse of reporters and announcers and fellow competitors, or the lack of personal character that started leaking into the public domain once his marriage dissolved and his indiscretions became public.  It was not just the theatrical dropping/flinging of the club in lieu of a follow-through on a poor shot, the foul language on mic.  It was more.  Think about that quote, what it conveys:  (i) I am so fabulous that, unlike my fellow competitors, I don’t need to play my best to win, I can even play poorly and win; and (ii) I am so fabulous that I am pretty close to perfection.  And then consider the fact that the man thought it was appropriate to utter those thoughts in public, on the one day of his life when he had the biggest audience of his life.

And then think about the victory speeches that have been given by McIlroy and the one given yesterday by Spieth.  Not that these guys are lacking in confidence, but notice the absence of bragging.  Notice Spieth in Butler Cabin, deflecting an opportunity to boast (“what are your goals, now that you have won your first Masters?”), and choosing instead to flatter Bubba Watson, last year’s winner sitting dejectedly next to him:  “I want to be like Bubba, I want to win two Masters.”  Watching Bubba break into a big grin, you had to realize that Spieth is a genuinely good guy, that he is exactly what Woods is not.  Le roi est mort, vive le roi !

Maybe the weekend will prove me wrong, but do you suppose Tiger Woods has a better chance at a resurrected career than Rory McIlroy – who may have already peaked?   If Spieth cruises, I would short Nike and go long on Adidas, as this kid seems to have the mental makeup to complement a complete golf game.  Spieth vs Johnson could be like Dempsey vs Tunney (which happened before the world began) – the slugger vs. the complete game.  I, for one, have always disliked the contemporary strategy of preferring to leave yourself a wedge from the rough rather than a 5-iron from the fairway, and Spieth could have the answer:  false dilemma, as neither strategy is as good as hitting an 8-iron from the fairway.

More observations on why Golf Is Not A Fair Game:  Last Sunday, not just one but two professional golf tournaments were decided by the fates, not the performances of the contenders.

Exhibit A was the click of a smart-phone camera in the middle of Jordan Spieth’s  backswing on the first hole of his playoff against two other competitors, a distraction that ruined his swing and knocked him out of the playoff.  Yes, Tiger Woods gained fame for his unprecedented talent for terminating his swing under such circumstances, but in general, that is impossible even on the Tour.  In this case, it cost the impressive Mr. Spieth the tournament.   This is not a suggestion that the Tour should join with The Masters in rejecting the 21^st century and forbidding phones and cameras on the premises, merely a rueful  observation on one of the downsides to the combining of technological cleverness with human rudeness.

Exhibit B, on the other hand, involved a problem that yields more easily to a solution.  Stacy Lewis, as impressive on the women’s tour as is Mr. Spieth on the men’s, lost her playoff in a “major” tournament because, after striking her first two shots perfectly on the par-5 18^th hole, she found her ball in the middle of a manicured fairway but perched atop a sand-filled divot hole, the one type of lie from which even the best players cannot hit the kind of accurate shot needed to get it close to the hole on a difficult green.  Not surprisingly, Ms. Lewis, one of the best wedge players on the LPGA tour, could not even hit her 100-yard approach shot onto the green.

One imagines that Old Tom Morris, Francis Ouimet, Bobby Jones, and possibly even the bow-tied eccentrics sporting the USGA blazers, loved both these outcomes, because each proved once again that golf is that wacky, unpredictable old game that, like their vision of life, is really not fair at all.

Speaking for the loyal opposition, I disagree when it comes to divot holes on the pro tours.   For amateurs, I am all for playing-it-as-it-lies, mainly because it expedites play and provides a simple way of removing temptation from those who would rather cheat to win than play by the rules and lose.   But for the pros, the solution to the Stacy Lewis situation has been presented and is quite well-known:  divot holes, until grown over with fairway turf, should be considered “ground under repair,” meaning one can lift and drop on solid turf without penalty.   In all sports, I want to watch excellence in fair competition, the less luck the better.   As for the temptation to abuse the expanded GUR rule, I wouldn’t worry about the pros, as they know they are always on someone’s camera.

Ignoring the endless complaints about the Houston Texans’ personnel-moves regarding the quarterback position, I remain steadfast in my endorsement of the Bill O’Brien strategy.   That strategy (for readers who do not yet live in Texas) was to re-sign Ryan Mallett (who sparkled briefly in 2014 before being incapacitated during his second start), hire Brian Hoyer away from Cleveland, retain Tom Savage (whom they drafted last year), and dump two other guys who started for the Texans while Mallett was still in the hospital.

Speaking of hospitals, I would like to mention one aspect of the O’Brien strategy that has drawn little comment but could be seen as the essence of that strategy:  Coach O’Brien, having been forced, by QB injuries, to start 4 different QBs in a single season and having noticed that only 1 of the 4 had prior experience with the complex O’Brien offense, obviously resolved that he would never, never, never repeat that experience. Because Hoyer, like Mallett, knows the whole O’Brien offense in his sleep from working previously under O’Brien at New England, and Savage now has had a full season to absorb it, the Texans can now be confident of not having to re-live 2014.

But is that the best strategy, to employ three unproven QBs because each has upside potential plus an advanced degree in O’Brienology?  Consider the alternative ways of getting a franchise QB:

1)      Draft the next Andrew Luck – get the #1 draft choice in exactly the year when the next Andrew Luck enters the draft – in other words, get really really lucky;

2)      Draft the next Russell Wilson (3rd round of the draft) or Tom Brady (6th round) with a lower-round draft pick – in other words, get as lucky as one must be to score on option #1.  (Clearly, those picks were not a matter of rational analysis, as every one of the 32 teams passed at least twice on Wilson and at least five times on Brady, even though each, in hindsight, would have been worth a  #1 in the first round.)

3)      Draft the next Aaron Rogers – in other words, get someone in the bottom of the first round of the draft, have him spend several years as a backup to a hall of fame starter, and have him turn out to have been drafted way too low  – in other words, get as lucky as the Packers, Colts, Seahawks, and Patriots were.

4)      Pick up an elite QB when he becomes a free agent  – well, let’s skip that one altogether, as that is beyond good luck, it isn’t even conceivable.

OK, now that we have ruled out all of those dreamy options, how about signing up 2 guys who both are better than all the other free agents, have mastered the O’Brien offense, and have shown flashes of the ability to be at least a Trent Dilfer, Jake Delhomme, or Brad Johnson – in other words, good enough to start in a Super Bowl?  And keep a promising backup who also knows the offense?   Oh, sorry, that is what the Texans actually did.