W&W: What are the odds MLB commissioner Rob Manfred reinstates Pete Rose? And should he?

Wittenmyer & Williams is a regular point/counterpoint column from Enquirer Reds reporter Gordon Wittenmyer and sports columnist Jason Williams. This week, they weigh in on baseball commissioner Rob Manfred's pending decision on a Jan. 8 petition by Pete Rose's family to reinstate the Hit King from the permanently ineligible list.

Williams: Are you kidding me? Why would baseball consider a Pete Rose reinstatement yet again? I thought this issue was dead long before he was.

Wittenmyer: That’s cold, man. The fact is, it shouldn’t have to come to this now. Baseball should’ve reinstated him while he was still alive. You know how I feel about this.

Williams: And you know how I feel about this. I hope Rob Manfred stays the course and doesn’t reinstate Rose.

Wittenmyer: Well, Manfred’s already had two months to think about it since Rose’s family petitioned the commissioner’s office to consider it. So who knows what he’s going to do with that or when? But I think it’s clear that reinstating Rose would be good for Manfred and the game as much as it might be for Rose's family and fans.

Williams: Don’t be ridiculous. How’s that good for the game?

Wittenmyer: I’ll tell you exactly how. Baseball’s financial relationship with the gambling industry in recent years has muddied the waters on this whole issue. Baseball has at least surrendered some of its moral high ground. But more than that as they continue a zero-tolerance policy in the face of a gambling culture that has overrun sports, they run the risk of having no discretionary latitude in punishing players or staffers connected to gambling.

Williams: Well, they shouldn’t. This is one place I agree with Manfred. Baseball needs to hold the line on zero tolerance now more than ever. Reinstating Rose would be the most confusing message you could send on how serious you take the integrity of your game.

Wittenmyer: Look, when it comes to integrity, the one thing nobody disputes is that Rose as a player never cheated the game. You can’t say that about the steroid users and none of them were put on the permanently ineligible list. And they’ve all been eligible for the hall of fame. When it comes to the gambling issue and integrity, a lot of people in the game still privately wonder about that case involving Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter.

They also wonder how Ohtani himself was somehow unaware of $16 million being taken from his accounts for his interpreter’s gambling debts. The biggest international star in the game was determined to have no knowledge of his “friend’s” transgression very quickly. I’m not suggesting any guilt by Ohtani. The point is baseball leaves itself no wiggle room in a case like that if Ohtani were found to have had any involvement, even if it were just helping his friend. That’s just bad business.

Williams: Geez, man, take a breath.

Wittenmyer: You’re getting me fired up.

Williams: And by the way, Rose did cheat the game at least as a manager. He broke the one rule that’s posted in every clubhouse to this day: Do not gamble on baseball. You break that rule, you get banned permanently from the game. Everybody knows that.

Wittenmyer: What sometimes gets forgotten is that even when the ban was handed down in 1989, Bart Giamatti formally included the opportunity for Rose to apply for reinstatement after one year. So even in the beginning, there was an expectation that this might not end up being permanent.

Williams: Right. If Rose had shown remorse and if he hadn't lied for so long, maybe he would've been reinstated in the first couple of years. That's on him. And to his dying day, he lived in Vegas. He made appearances in casinos signing autographs into his 80s, making a living off of his notoriety both in baseball and the gambling scandal. That doesn't sound like a guy who regretted betting on baseball.

Wittenmyer: Maybe not, but it sounds an awful lot like a guy who might have lived with a gambling addiction. Even those close to him and former teammates have said that over the years. Maybe at the end of the day it was up to him to get help for it. But what's just as clear is that nobody seemed to love the game more, or playing the game more, than Rose did. That was as clear watching him as it was talking to him. That should be worth something to MLB. And I find it hard to believe Manfred has anything to lose in reinstating Rose now. The man is gone. There's nothing more he can say or do that would reflect poorly on the decision – and baseball is better with Pete Rose in it.

Williams: It's entirely his fault that he's not in baseball. It's OK to appreciate the way he played the game and what he brought to fans and still believe that he doesn't deserve to be reinstated. Those two things can both be right.

Wittenmyer: Pete Rose being reinstated and having a path to the hall of fame is the right thing to do. And if loving that outcome is wrong, I don't want to be right.