Pete Rose seeks reinstatement for the 4,256th time

A Cincinnati television station has this latest story and a link to the above letter, which it says was obtained from TMZ Sports.

Don't hold your breath waiting for MLB to respond favorably.

MLB is much, much too busy watching its stake in Draft Kings, one its "co-exclusive" official betting partners (along with BetMGM), to respond to the increasingly desperate pleas of one old man who gambled on baseball before MLB decided to plunge headlong into gambling itself.

Even if that desperate old man does have more hits than any other man who ever played the game.

Look, I get it: Pete Rose has done nothing to endear himself to the Lords of Baseball. According to a great many accounts, Rose hasn't been an endearing sort. If there were a Top 10 list of "Nice Guys in Baseball," Rose wouldn't be in the top 4,256. What does (what should) that have to do with his amazing baseball résumé?

Now that professional gamblers and MLB have openly entered into a myriad of lucrative professional partnerships, Rose -- whose unforgiveable sin, remember, was gambling, not being a jerk -- belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Otherwise Commissioner Manfred looks sillier than Claude Rains did in this scene from Casablanca:

The only thing I ask -- and I ask this only because the record does not support that this individual actually compromised his performance one iota, even when gamblers' money was allegedly strewn about his hotel room -- is that Joe Jackson, a member of the White Sox (the same team that is now the official sports betting partner of Caesars Sportsbook and the exclusive casino partner of Caesars Entertainment), be reinstated and enshrined in Cooperstown before Rose.