Pete Rose, Donald Trump and the corruption of literally everything

On May 13, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred, issued a decision reinstating Hall of Fame eligibility of 17 deceased former players, all of whom had previously been permanently banned from possible inclusion.

BFD, you might say, and you would be right. Given climate change, the planet’s wars and the horrific last four months that sane Americans have had to endure, what difference does any of that make? You may think that professional sports are mere Roman circuses to keep the proles diverted from matters their rulers don’t want them to think about, except that unlike the circuses of the Roman Empire, which were free, the American varieties charge exorbitant admission prices (either directly or through cable and streaming charges).

Even more inviting of cynicism, Manfred’s reinstatement involves players who gambled on their own sport while they were actively competing. In light of the explosive growth of sports gambling ($13.7 billion in revenue in 2024) since it was legalized nationwide in 2018 — by the U.S. Supreme Court, eager to give a boost to a sleazy corporate enterprise that breeds addiction), isn’t it hypocrisy to care whether the players bet too?

Perhaps. But the commissioner’s action throws a revealing light on American politics and class sociology.

What the story is all about is not the other 16 players — all more or less forgotten today — but the potential Hall of Fame reinstatement of Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time leader in hits, who was disqualified for gambling on games as a player and a manager. I won’t belabor the biographical details except to note that from his debarment in 1989 till his death in 2024, Rose tirelessly lobbied for reinstatement, and each time, the commissioner refused. Manfred himself denied Rose’s petition several times – till now. So what’s different this time?

Manfred met with Donald Trump in the White House a couple of weeks before this decision. That is the only salient reason. Trump has said that he, as president, would grant Rose “a complete pardon”; since that cannot logically pertain to the Baseball Hall of Fame issue, it probably refers to Rose’s conviction on two charges of tax evasion, for which he was fined and briefly imprisoned.

That long-ago criminal case is irrelevant to Hall of Fame candidacy, as was the successful paternity suit lodged against Rose, and the statutory rape allegation, for which he was never charged but which he admitted (sort of), and which cost him his commentary gig at Fox Sports (part of a larger organization with a stratospherically high bar for personal misconduct).

Lots of sports stars have been less-than-stellar characters: we need only think of Ty Cobb and all the ’roided-up players who established suspicious home run records. But it seems reasonable to assume that Trump’s sudden obsession with Hall of Fame eligibility standards has to do not merely with Rose’s baseball infractions, but also with the ballplayer’s moral turpitude off the field.

As has been the case with virtually all Trump’s pardons, Rose is exactly the sort of person for whom our president would feel a natural affinity. If liars, cheaters and tax evaders can be exonerated, then Trump has symbolically defined our national deviancy down to his own level, and of course wins thereby. He displays a virtually demonic lust to corrupt everything he touches.

We must also understand this incident in its larger context, as one of a series of actions by the Trump regime to insert itself into every facet of American life: from effectively taking over private universities and dictating their curricula to banning books from the Naval Academy, dictating prices to retail businesses, attempting to change cartographic nomenclature like (“Gulf of America,” indeed) and vetting exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution, which is not formally a part of government and has had an independent policy on exhibits for the last 178 years). Finally, we get to sports. Ironically, these intrusions are enthusiastically supported by the same voters who whine incessantly about the nanny state.

Americans have seen a massive spike in the use of the word “authoritarian” in the last few years, but what we are now witnessing is the incipient stage of totalitarianism: a regime's efforts to gain control of all aspects of life, not just the overtly political, and effectively to erase the distinction between the state and civil society.

In his eyewitness account of Nazi rule in Germany, William L. Shirer repeatedly emphasized the smothering control of the regime over everyday existence, which made it difficult even for those who wanted simply to retreat into private life to evade the constant barrage of propaganda, publicity stunts, parades and regimentation. Hitler believed the German people must never be allowed to “cool off”; on the contrary, they had to be subjected to a perpetual drumbeat.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s documentation of Stalinism strikes the same note: the elimination of a private existence away from politics, with the regime constantly forcing itself upon one’s attention, feeding each individual’s growing atomization and learned helplessness.

The true goal of totalitarianism is not to turn all of us into enthusiastic believers, just as transforming Pete Rose into a retrospective hero will not convince the skeptical, and censoring books and museum exhibits will not persuade us that slavery never existed. Rather than brainwashing us, the objective of the totalitarian is to bludgeon us into apathy, resignation and passivity. If you’re fed up barely four months into the regime’s misrule, how will you feel 44 months from now?

Of course no such regime can impose itself on a society that is overwhelmingly unwilling to play along. I have already written about the profound streak of irrational thinking and resentment, and the nihilistic urge to “burn it all down,” felt by many ordinary Americans. But what is noteworthy about this attempted imposition of totalitarian control on activities hitherto exempt from government meddling is the behavior of many of our so-called elites, who don’t have the excuse of poor education or low income. Evidently, half the electorate grew bored, confused and uncomfortable living in a free country, however imperfect it may have been. In Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film "Germany in Autumn," a character explains German acceptance of Nazi rule: “Sometimes, people just want somebody to think for them.” That same attitude applies to millions of Americans.

Rob Manfred, like so many politicians, corporate titans, university presidents and others, proves that the leaders of our society are laughably easy to compromise and corrupt. He is no different than Jeff Bezos; all it took was a phone call for the Amazon mogul to backtrack on breaking out the separate cost of Trump’s tariffs in the prices his company advertises, and then to pretend that he’d never intended to do such a thing.

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Likewise, Columbia University’s trustees caved in to Trump’s demands to dictate university policy rather than touch the university’s $14.8 billion endowment as a substitute for federal grants. Why did ABC News settle a lawsuit Trump had filed that the network was almost certain to win, and then pay him $15 million for the privilege? These craven handovers will have an entirely predictable result: They will only encourage further extortionate suits against news organizations.

Perhaps worst of all are the partners in the big law firms. Their entire business model, their whole inner nature, is predicated on hair-trigger litigiousness, predatory aggressiveness and a hunger to win at all costs. But when faced with Trump’s illegitimate ultimatum not only to cease serving clients he disapproves of, but to provide future legal services pro bono to clients or causes he prefers, they instantly consented to “agreements” that resemble the confessions signed by the defendants in Stalin's show trials.

This disposition among America’s elites to bend the knee and betray their supposed principles did not first manifest itself at noon on Jan. 20; the rot in this country, the so-called land of the free and home of the brave, has been worsening for years, like termites slowly and patiently gnawing away at the wooden sills of a house, leading to inevitable collapse.