All Bets Are Off

Listen, I've had just about enough of Pete Rose, OK. Enough.

What's needed is a press blackout on the subject. Not another word about a Rose reinstatement, not a peep about his getting into the Hall of Fame, nor a syllable even remotely invoking an image of a hand-wringing Bud Selig.

Rose and Selig, my friends, you're both losers. Give it a rest. Mike Schmidt and Joe Morgan, here's an idea: Take a cue from George Hendrick and give us a break already.

Look, I'm exasperated OK, there's no way around what's coming. All bets are off. I'm compelled, compelled mind you, compelled to express myself with profanity for the first time in the history of this publication.

Sure, it's the Internet and you can let it rip all you want, but for four freaking years, I've kept it clean. Until now. I'll just get this out of my system just this once and I promise, PG from now on.

What I'd really like to say is that Pete Rose is the biggest piece of shit in the history of baseball. That's what I'd prefer to say, that Rose is the biggest piece of shit in the history of baseball.

But to be fair, I don't really know if Pete Rose is the biggest piece of shit in the history of baseball. Not the entire history of baseball. I mean, what do I really know about the 1800s?

Just cause I live and breathe baseball and turned in a bunch of book reports on the subject in grade school and listened to Vinny from the cradle, I don't really know how bad a guy Ty Cobb was. Not really. They say he was bad guy, maybe even a bigger piece of shit than Pete Rose. Don't know. Wasn't there.

Let's give Rose the benefit of the doubt. Maybe just maybe Ty Cobb beats out Rose from 1869 to 1963 and is the biggest piece of shit in the history of baseball, covering a longer period of time. Perhaps that's the case.

Using that paradigm, Cobb wins. Less career base-knocks, but a bigger piece of shit, over a longer stretch of history. In this example anyway, for the sake of argument.

So Pete Rose is the biggest piece of shit in the history of baseball over about the last third of the 1900s and is a work in progress for the 21st Century. Let's go with that…

Thanks to your many requests, we've made our "Rick Mondayism of the Month" a weekly. Here's his latest: "Beltre's had a good day already. Doubled in the first, homered in the 13th, make that homered in the third, it was his 14th home run..."

Did you catch the item about the Dodgers bumping Andy Ashby from their Florida to Chicago flight to keep him from infecting his teammates? They practically came right out and said it was OK to send him on a commercial flight, so all he'd infect was the civilian population of two states...

Look-alikes: Al Rosen and Tom Smothers…

When I was a kid, I thought Al Kaline was responsible for the Alkaline battery. Guys had to work during the off season in those days you know, and I thought maybe making batteries was Kaline's gig....

Remember, glove conquers all....