Why is he here? Honestly, major props to Pete Rose for taking bumps from Kane in consecutive Wrestlemanias but is this the guy who should be the inaugural celebrity inductee? We would rather discuss Pete Rose on our Baseball section than here.
Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn’t, but we had a logo change here at Notinhalloffame.com.
Since the inception of our site in 2009, our core logo has always had an image of a filmstrip with four different potential Hall of Famers from respective fields. We have alternated from Pete Rose and Barry Bonds for baseball[1], Don Cherry for Hockey and in the past we have had Alice Cooper, Rush, Kiss (who would all get in) and now currently Deep Purple representing Rock and Roll.
The WWE, had always been represented by an iconic picture of Randy “Macho Man” Savage holding the Intercontinental Title. Savage had fallen so far out of favor with the WWE that it almost literally took his death and a few years in top of it to get him into the Hall.
With Savage’s induction, a new WWE figure was needed…something that pops out right away.
We have elected to go with former three time Tag Team Champions, Demolition.
I know what some of you might be thinking. Ax and Smash aren’t even in your top twenty-five and there has been little push for them to get in. That may be, however this was a very popular team in their day, and damned if that look doesn’t stick out on the logo!
Besides with Bruno Sammartino, The Ultimate Warrior and Randy Savage now in, the ones who are no longer active or deceased who NEEDED to be there are now there. That makes the other spot a lot harder to fill, so why not with a tandem of a former Masked Superstar and Soviet sympathizer?
For the record, here are the other wrestling personalities that had been considered to take the spot of the “Macho Man” on the Notinhalloffame.com logo.
“The British Bulldog”, Davey Boy Smith
So there it is.
Our current Notinhalloffame.com logo has Barry Bonds, Don Cherry, Demolition and Deep Purple.
Who will be the next one from our logo who will have to be removed because he/they got into their respective Hall of Fame?
As always, we here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to thank you for your support and look forward to your feedback!
[1] With the PED controversy, it seemed more appropriate to interject a steroids guy over a gambler. Notice we didn’t say “inject”!
Statistically, there is no argument about the Hall of Fame qualifications of Pete Rose. Even the most casual baseball fan is aware that “Charlie Hustle” is the all-time hit king with 4,256 hits, a record that may never be broken. Rose was also a 17-time All-Star and proved to be a clutch performer, as evidenced by his three World Series Rings, including a World Series MVP. Sadly, as much as casual sports fans are aware of Rose’s on-field accomplishments, many who have never turned their dial to ESPN know his off-field embarrassments.
As many are aware, Pete Rose was banned from Baseball for betting on the sport. This has long been considered taboo in Major League Baseball, as the league has prohibited its players from betting on the sport. Rose was caught, most specifically, regularly wagering on his own team.
Here is where it gets interesting for us at NIHOF. We will flat-out tell you that the five of us who comprise the NIHOF committee are borderline degenerate gamblers, so it seems wrong to us to come down on a kindred spirit. That said, nothing in our line of work prevents us from placing a wager or two; there was for Pete Rose.
What made it worse was that Rose denied the allegations for years. How different would it have been had he owned up and admitted what he did? When heroes fall (and sadly, we are a society that wants to see it happen), the expectation is that they own up to their mistakes and are forgiven. One only has to look at the current situation with Andy Petite and Roger Clemens and see the reactions to these two pitchers. Petite apologized, and when he pitches today, fans don’t think about his former PED use. Clemens is on TV; all we can think about are his hollow denials.
This isn’t to say Pete Rose would have been reinstated if he had admitted his guilt. Baseball is rooted so deeply in tradition that it often fails to move forward. There is a very sizable chance that Rose would have remained ineligible had he admitted that wrongdoing twenty years ago. What probably cemented his fate is that when he finally did admit to gambling on Baseball, it was in 2004 upon releasing a book. The timing was awful as he did so two days after the Baseball Hall of Fame announced their 2004 inductees. It reeked of selfishness, and the apology fell flat to many.
Regardless, we hope Pete Rose will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame at some point, but now it will be posthumously. There is a chance now, as Commissioner Rob Manfred has unbanned Rose (and others) from the game, and it will be a fascinating case for the Veterans Committee, should he make it. There should be no doubt that many believe he is the greatest omission of any Hall of Fame period. There is no question about that. Pete will, however, likely be our Hit King candidate for years to come.