Friday, February 01, 2008

Snow Day Musings


I'm home for a snow day. ;o) As I look out my window I see a very wet landscape. It's raining here---but west and north it is icy. I'm glad I don't have to navigate on the icy roads. I checked the weather from my previous home (Champaign-Urbana)and my old school is out for weather too. They got eight to ten inches of snow. Sometimes I'm just sooooo happy I live in Maryland. Most particularly when Illinois is getting hit with sub-zero temperatures (last week) and snow, snow. snow (today).

Meanwhile, I'm hanging out at my house not doing anything too strenous. I have cinnamon rolls rising on the back of the stove and I've been channel hopping as we call it in my house. To be specific, I've read a little, watched tv a little, napped a little. Well, you get the idea. It's a SNOW DAY!!

Anyway, while skipping past a lineup of uninteresting movies I found the biography channel showing a piece on Pete Rose. The baseball player. I was inspired to post my personal, non-expert opinion that he should be reinstated in baseball, and further that his name should be put back on the ballot for the Hall of Fame. Not because he didn't do anything wrong--obviously gambling on your sport is particularly stupid--but because in light of what we now know of the use of performance enhancing drugs, it seems way less offensive than what some have done. I mean, if Pete Rose had bet against his own team (as far as I know he never did) or there was evidence that he had thrown a game to receive a betting payoff (again, never did) I'd get the hysteria and attitude that he had harmed baseball. But to act like gambling makes him a person of low character and that the Hall of Fame is a testament to a life-well lived in the moral sense...that's just ridiculous. Hall of Fame honors are about the sport, and unless you plan to kick out anybody who really did cheat, imo, by using steroids or HGH or testosterone etc. Well, it's kind of hypocritical. Anyway--it got on my nerves listening to the various muckity-mucks interviewed in the piece acting like Pete Rose was the worst guy who ever lived and that his exclusion from the Hall of Fame was somehow the right, moral thing that just annoyed me. Thus, I share my annoyance with you, dear reader.