Examining Bart Giamatti's baseball cards
It was 20 years ago today that Pete Rose accepted his ban from baseball, handed down by Commissioner Bart Giamatti.
“The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is a sad end of a sorry episode,” Giamatti said that day. “One of the game’s greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts. There is absolutely no deal for reinstatement.”
Giamatti died just eight days later, which led to a memorial card produced in a handful of 1990 sets — Donruss (No. 716) as seen here and in Topps (No. 396), its O-Pee-Chee counterpart, the 1990 Score Rookie Dream Team set and in the 1990 T/ M Umpires release.
None of the cards are particularly valuable as anything more than a history lesson into one of baseball’s more unfortunate tales. (The Tiffany version of his Topps card, which is limited to roughly 15,000 copies — pretty rare for its time — is worth $4.)
Should Pete Rose be reinstated? Not in this writer’s mind.
He spent years lying to everyone, denying that he bet on the game as manager of the Cincinnati Reds — only to finally admit it when attempting to make a buck by selling a book.
Not sure what’s worse here — the lying or the gambling. And gambling — in any of sport — is one of the largest sins possible for an athlete or manager.
Chris Olds has collected sports cards and memorabilia since 1987. Before coming to Beckett Media, he wrote about the hobby for the Orlando Sentinel on his blog, SportsStuff, and for the San Antonio Express-News and The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News. Do you have a comment, question or idea? Send e-mail to him at colds@beckett.com.
He deserves to be a member of the HOF based on his numbers. But I don’t think he deserves to be back in the game of baseball. I think MLB and the HOF can separate the two and allow his on-the-field accomplishments to be recognized.