One simple reason:

1. Taking steroids wasn’t illegal until just a couple of years ago.

Gambling on baseball, whether it was your team or not, has been illegal for 80 years.

It’s posted in every locker room in every stadium. It nearly ruined the game 3 decades before Rose was born. Taking steroids was a moral hazard and morally wrong, but it didn’t violate the one rule that is the tenet of all the rules in baseball. Rose knew this and did it anyway. Pete Rose’s one and only concern has always been Pete Rose. Look at the quote that was linked to above: I paraphrase:

Alex Rodriguez is a HOF player, whether he used steroids or not. That said, steroids are worse for the game than gambling is so if he’s a Hall of Famer, I should be a Hall of Famer as well.

In other words, because I think that steroids are worse than gambling, and because I think that a known steroid user should be a Hall of Famer, that means I should be in the Hall of Fame.

What a selfish prick.

unfair advantage is a constant threat — from spitballs to stealing signs to corked bats to PEDs. those threats you can control for, at least somewhat. at any rate, only rarely does one team have an unfair advantage. if a PED is undetectable, it’s undetectable for everyone. if umps are slack on checking balls for vaseline or bats for rubber balls, the opening is available to everyone. the field remains level, if slightly altered.

the hazard with gambling (or A-Rod sending signs to players on other teams) is different. fans should NEVER have to question whether somebody is giving their all. if fans start to feel that player x didn’t get to that fly ball, not because he was slow, confused, inept, etc., but because he was deliberately dropping it, the game would go downhill quickly. the game’s basic integrity depends on a perception that the players take their roles seriously. allowing gambling to infiltrate the game would damage that perception (see: boxing).

imagine if gambling were common in baseball how chris duncan would be received by the fans. imagine how fans would respond to Wellemeyer’s next 8-run outing.

Here’s my reasoning…

With steroids, you are using chemicals to, in theory, make yourself a better player than you otherwise would have been. It’s wrong, in my book. However, at the end of the day, the baseball players take the field, the managers manage, and one team or the other wins with the outcome decided by the guys playing the game.

However, when someone has a bet riding on their team’s performance, and said person is in control of not just his own actions but the fate of his team as a whole, it changes the equation. Even if the individual bets on his team to win, it is still altering the equation. Suppose a team is playing in an extra inning game, and the only remaining options for pitching are sticking with a tiring reliever or going to tomorrow’s starting pitcher. The best decision for winning the game may be to throw the next day’s starter out there, but for the good of the team it would be wise to stick with said reliever and cross your fingers. A manager with $2,000 riding on the game could look at the situation differently. You have other similar situations where even a bet on your team to win could, consciously or not, alter the decision making process.

Furthermore, gambling nearly crushed baseball in 1920. It is difficult to imagine the full damage done by the Black Sox scandal today, but it was truly devastating. It’s a good thing that George Hermann Ruth started playing outfield when he did. In any case, it has been plastered all over MLB clubhouses not to bet on baseball. It doesn’t say “Don’t bet against your team, but betting FOR them is ok.” Rose knew this, and did it anyway. He deserves whatever punishment is thrown his way. FTR, I don’t buy that he didn’t bet against his team either. Whoever his PR adviser was right about the time of his apology/confession needs to be fired, b/c they completely blew that thing.