OK Selig--- you reinstate Rose--- then you better reinstate Shoeless Joe.

[trumad]

Rose admitted that he bet on the game of baseball and on his own team. There is plenty of evidence that shows Shoeless Joe Jackson was completely innocent.


<Snip>
To this day, his name remains on the Major League Baseball Ineligible list. Jackson cannot be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame unless his name is removed from that list. However, he spent most of the last 30 years of his life proclaiming his innocence. In November 1999, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a motion to honor his sporting achievements, supporting a move to have the ban posthumously rescinded, so that he could be admitted to the Hall of Fame.<19> The motion was symbolic, as the U.S. Government has no jurisdiction in the matter. At the time, MLB commissioner Bud Selig confirmed that Jackson's case was under review, but to date, no action has been taken that would allow Jackson's reinstatement.

In recent years, evidence has come to light that casts doubt on Jackson's role in the fix. For instance, Jackson initially refused to take a payment of $5,000, only to have Lefty Williams toss it on the floor of his hotel room. Jackson then tried to tell White Sox owner Charles Comiskey about the fix, but Comiskey refused to meet with him. Also, before Jackson's grand jury testimony, team attorney Alfred Austrian coached Jackson's testimony in a manner that would be considered highly unethical even by the standards of the time, and would probably be considered criminal by today's standards. For instance, Austrian got Jackson to admit a role in the fix by pouring a large amount of whiskey down Jackson's throat. He also got the nearly illiterate Jackson to sign a waiver of immunity. Years later, the other seven players implicated in the scandal confirmed that Jackson was never at any of the meetings. Williams, for example, said that they only mentioned Jackson's name to give their plot more credibility.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoeless_Joe_Jackson

[madinmaryland]

1. Selig is an idiot. He will find a way to screw it up.

[cboy4]

2. He already is in the HOF. I saw his Black Sox display in Cooperstown.

[El Supremo]

3. Jackson and Rose had one thing in common.

They were both dumber than a door knob.

Should they be punished for that? Yes, but only if they were not judged totally incompetent.