Q&A: Former MLB commissioner Fay Vincent, Hall of Fame prospect, legacy on Pete Rose's death

Fay Vincent was the deputy commissioner of Major League Baseball in 1989 when Burt Giamatti banned Pete Rose for life. Rose died on Monday at the age of 83. athletic Vincent, now 86, reached home Monday night to discuss Rose's legacy and whether Vincent's view of Rose has changed over time.

Giamatti died He was fired less than two weeks after Rose was handed over, and Vincent served as MLB's CEO until 1992 when he was replaced by Bud Selig. Both Selig and his successor, Rob Manfred, have maintained MLB's ban on Rose.

In 2022, Manfred said he continued to believe the question of whether Rose should be in the Hall of Fame should be decided by the Hall, not MLB.

Questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

I apologize if this is the first time you're hearing this, but did you know that Pete Rose died?

I didn't know that. It's a sad reality, I'm sorry to hear that.

I am sorry to deliver the news. I wonder if we can briefly see him again?

I think he was devoted to baseball in the sense of the game and his effort was certainly intense. He had a series of quality issues for his behavior. He did something wrong as soon as he arrived, and by the time I got to know him and Bart and I dealt with him on the betting issue, it was really too late. I mean, he formed his attitude and his character and I'm afraid he really thought that money was so important and he was betting a lot and he lost a lot and I think the problem of corruption was a serious problem in his life.

Do you think baseball should change its approach to gambling or even the Hall of Fame? Does it change anything about its historical position?

Well, I don't know if it should. It certainly has. My guess is that his death, making the whole point of his position in the Hall of Fame — and the positions of other people who are great players and involved in steroids and other things — makes those cases a little bit easier. Because he had a terrific ability to make the issue personal and it could be, “Are attitudes toward gambling and sports dictated by Pete Rose?” Should he be allowed to be inducted into the Hall of Fame for the fact that gambling is now widespread and very popular, and therefore it is no longer appropriate to be too bent on it?

It's a bit like the whole drinking and smoking problem. You know, when we were young people, drinking and smoking had some moral meaning and gambling always had a moral meaning. Now it doesn't. It's legal now, where it used to be illegal in this country, and I think that makes a big difference.

Do I think he belongs in the Hall of Fame? I don't think anyone who participates in sports corruption like he did belongs in the Hall of Fame. I think respect should have a moral dimension. Otherwise we have to perform the ceremony in the prison yard, because the prisoner has to come out of his cell to be honored in our prison yard. I don't think it's a good thing.

Do you think he was ever completely truthful, in the book or at any point, do you think he ever came completely clean?

I think you have to separate his perspective from the way things happened. I don't know that he was completely truthful in the end. But this is not so true because he always wanted to find excuses. The real excuse was that he always needed money, he always had problems with his excess income, and he cheated on taxes. People forget that he spent time in federal prison for tax fraud, meaning he didn't pay his taxes on the income he received.

So I think he might have thought he was telling the truth about what he did. I don't think he ever thought he did anything particularly wrong. “In the end, almost everyone cheats,” he would say, and cheating is just another form of competition. And he was able to cheat something, and he got away with it for a while, and then he didn't.

In the end, when he explained what he had done, he always felt that, because he never bet against his own team, what he was doing was excused. And yet he knew, and I knew and Bart knew that when you don't bet every day, you don't bet on a pitcher on your team that you don't think is particularly good or any better — like he had a bunch of pitchers on his team that he Don't support – He didn't bet when some of them pitched.

Do you think he will eventually make the Hall of Fame? The question should be asked separately, now do you think his death will open the door?

I think it's going to be easy. I think there will be a form of respect for someone like Rose, and maybe someone like (Barry) Bond and maybe (Alex Rodriguez). And all these guys are different, because each one involves a little bit different problems, a little different personal latitude. Burt and I would talk, and we always believed that (if) Pete Rose came forward and said, “Look, you got me. I did it. It was a terrible thing that I did. I'm sorry. I violated baseball laws. I Was doing something that was illegal and I was wrong. But I want to help baseball, I want to go back to the hall of fame. I'm going to help you guys, I'm going to explain why baseball Catch is a bad idea, corruption is stupid.” I think if he had done that he would have been in the Hall of Fame long ago.

But instead, he played a very hard game, and I think it was because he really thought that playing it straight, to be honest, would cost him money, and he was desperate to make a lot of money. He thought that if he could get into the Hall of Fame, it would make his autograph that much more valuable. This will make him a more interesting speaker. He had a lot of income. And I think he was probably right about that. I think eventually baseball will figure out a way to honor people in a separate category, within limits. So it would be a tainted honor, but it would be a form of honor recognizing some of his achievements and not ignoring his many losses.

Your position over the years, certainly publicly, has been very consistent. And I wonder, do you ever waffle? Your view on the pit, did you ever go back and forth on it or was it really constant the whole time?

I like to think I'm steady, because I'm a lawyer, I care about obeying the law. When he was doing the things, they were against the laws of baseball, but more importantly, they were against the laws of the land. Betting on sporting events was illegal, and I helped pass that law as commissioner. I think it was 1990 or '91, and I believe in that law. And I think gambling is very bad.

I don't think sports gambling will survive in this country, because I think the element of corruption — and we've already seen it — is going to grow. There is a lot of money, and gambling people are raising their hands. They are running ads during game broadcasts. They read ads by well-loved announcers, explaining gambling activities and explaining why the ad wants people to bet on baseball.

I think the element of corruption that is brought into baseball and sports is really negative. And I think the dollars involved are going to be huge, and we're almost certainly going to have corruption in college basketball. We're going to get it in college sports outside of basketball. And as all that unfolds, it's going to take a while. I'm definitely not going to be around if it changes. But there will come a time when the country will say, “We have to clean this up, it's too messy.”

Would Burt Giamatti say everything you just said, more or less?

I think yes. If anything, the difference between us: He thought that Rose had done very bad things, done immoral things, forget the law. They were wrong because they were an attack, an insult, on his beloved baseball. So even though Rose claims that she likes baseball and that she cares about it, Bart will dismiss it and say “He can't possibly like baseball, because think about what he's been through.” He is now an example of someone for whom money came before baseball's beautiful wins and losses. And Bart wasn't interested in money. He was not a man of commerce. He was an educator, a professor at Yale, and then president of Yale. He was a romantic moralist, and I was a pretty hard and fast law-and-order jurist.

We agree on all major points. We strongly agree. And you know, he'd say maybe I'm playing the black notes and he's playing the white notes, or vice versa. But they all made music, and the music was the same, but the core was a little different. The song was written by him and me in different keys.

When was the last time you, if at all, had any contact with Rose? Was there ever any point of contact after his exile?

no I never spoke to him. I dealt with his lawyer when his deportation was going on. I wrote the contract between Baseball and him. I handled the negotiations with his lawyer and Bart, John Dowd was very involved, the guy who sued for baseball. But Dowd and I did all the legal stuff, and Bart handled the press conference and the explanation of why it was an important moment. And there was no difference in anything important between Bart and me. There were significant differences in the way we approached the problem because of our different backgrounds.

Anything you want to say about Pete that we didn't get to?

I'd like to know if, at the last minute, Pete calmly says to someone a confessional or, “I messed things up. I'm really sorry. I wasn't smart enough to avoid all this.” It was a life Pete hoped didn't end, and in a way, that's a real tragedy, because it didn't have to be. But he keeps making bad mistakes. And after he got caught, there were a lot of things he might have done that Bart and I talked about that he never did. I always thought that in the end, he wouldn't realize that the biggest problem was his continued pattern of bad judgment.

(Top photo: Sports Illustrated via Phil Huber/Getty Images)