News Drops That Pete Rose *Allegedly* Used Corked Bats For 20+ Years
A former groundskeeper for the Montreal Expos alleges that Major League Baseball's all-time hits leader Pete Rose corked his bats during his 95-game stint with the club in 1984.
"Pete Rose would have his bats corked in the visitors' clubhouse at Olympic Stadium," Joe Jammer told Danny Gallagher of the Montreal Gazette.
Jammer said Bryan Greenberg, who worked in the visitors' clubhouse, showed him the machine that was used to cork Rose's bats and told him that he had been doing it for a long time.
"The guy (Greenberg) was saying Rose had been corking his bat for 20 years," Jammer said. "The guy said that nobody checks him because he's a singles hitter."
Greenberg said he could not comment on Jammer's allegations.
Before we get down to brass tacks, Pete Rose obviously has Hall of Fame numbers:
Stats that I always said should put him in the Hall of Fame, regardless of his gambling ban. That was until Steve Stone, a man I put on the highest of high pedestals as far as baseball brains are concerned, brought up a few great points on Twitter last fall:
Everyone has heard the 1st argument a million times, that there are some real scumbags in MLB's Hall of Fame, most notably Ty Cobb, who was a historic racist charged with attempted murder. So Pete Rose likes to gamble. So what? He clearly wasn't throwing games and his statistical output proves that.
But if you're going to gamble on your team, you have to gamble on every single game. All 162 of them. Either that, or you're holding a giant ass billboard that says, "I DON'T THINK WE'RE GOING TO WIN TODAY" up to bookies like Stone says, and therein lies the rub. If ya go an inch, ya go a mile.
That, and Rose had multiple chances to get in the Hall if he followed a few different sets of protocols, none of which he partook in. His fault he's not in and nobody else's.
But now we're just finding out that he corked bats for 20+ years???
I mean… makes sense. The dude has lied through his teeth just about his entire public life so this should come as no shock to anyone. But there are a billion different studies out there that says corked bats don't actually work, and to an extent I'd agree. A lighter bat = and ever so slightly quicker swing = more balls in play = more hits. That's just science. But it's also science that a heavier bat would hit a ball with greater force which would equate to harder contact. So…. there's a trade off and in the end, it balances out. There are pros/cons with corked bats but the pros aren't near great enough to outweigh the cons of getting caught, so using one is stupid.
And I kinda wish Rose did get caught for no other reason than he was a fucking moron for using one. Whatever your stance on his HoF candidacy is, I think we all could agree that he should be banned for life just for being a total moron. I'm only kinda kidding there.
I mean cheating and baseball go hand in hand with each other but to use a corked bat for 1000s of at bats is just so careless I wish he pulled a Sosa, and after pulling a Sosa, he pulled an Albert Belle, which is one of the funniest moments in baseball history if you don't know it. Fast forward to 1 minute in the next video:
Nevertheless: the guy was just a cheating scumbag. He knew the rules and broke them over, and over, and over again and now take the hard stance that he should NOT be in The Hall of Fame. That said I would have loved to see what a juiced up Pete Rose would have hit in the 1990s. Just pepper the ball all over the place while making sure that over didn't hit.