by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

SCOTTSDALE AZ–First big decision on the new Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is on tap. Pete Rose, who has been banned from baseball now for 25 years, asked the Commissioner to lift such ban. Commissioner Manfred said he is considering Rose’s request.

In Tampa, Florida, Alex Rodriguez is having a good spring after one year absence from the game. The 39-year old slugger is trying to comeback. We all know A-Rod’s sleazy past, his denial and confessions about steroids. Here in the Valley of the Sun, among the 15 teams training, Mark McGwire is a coach at the Dodgers facility in Glendale. About 20 minutes away Ryan Braun is roaming the outfield for the Milwaukee Brewers. Braun, who put the loyal Milwaukee fan-base through the ringer with his lies about steroids.

We all get it. For baseball gambling is the mortal sin, everybody understands that. A good argument could be made than previous to Pete Rose and to the ‘steroids era ‘scandals, the 1919 Black Sox scandal dominated the most negative story in baseball history, when after the 1919 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds, eight Black Sox players were accused of intentionally losing games in exchange for money from gamblers. The eight players later were acquitted by a jury, but Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis banned, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Claude “Lefty” Williams, Buck Weaver, Arnold “Chick” Gandil, Fred McMillan, Charles “Swede” Risberg, and Oscar “Happy” Felsch the Black Sox for life.

So Pete Rose has been banned. His play on the field makes him a first ballot Hall of Fame inductee, yet he has never even been on a Hall of Fame ballot. Jose Canseco, who on his two books, confessed to have taken steroids, and also named others who also used the substances, was blackballed from the game, yet those who cheated are welcomed back. It looks like it doesn’t pay to tell the truth. We know the regular suspects, Sammy Sosa, Rafeal Palmeiro and others who really never got caught, but also were on the juice, the all-time MLB home run leader Barry Bonds, not long ago said he belonged in the Hall of Fame.

I am not a prude, and I believe in redemption, but it is time that baseball makes a decision on Pete Rose. I admire those that admit to their transgressions, more than those that wait and wait and wait (to see if it goes away) and then, when they are against the wall and their careers are in jeopardy, come and speak the truth.

The most influential man to walk the earth said: “let him who is without sin, cast the first stone”

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for the Oakland A’s and the Spanish TV voice for the Angels and does News and Commentary each week on http://www.sportsradioservice.com