Losing My Perspicacity, May 14, 2025

On Pete Rose and the exhaustion of reminding powerful men that women matter

Author

Julie DiCaro
May 14, 2025

Good morning and Happy Wednesday! Thanks for starting your day with me.

Before we get to the political news, I wanted to take a moment to talk about MLB’s decision to reinstate Pete Rose and all eight members of the 1919 Black Sox, as well as several other players, all long-dead (I believe). The reinstatement will make Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson eligible for Cooperstown's MLB Hall of Fame. You can see the full list of reinstated players here. Here’s Rob Manfred’s brain-dead reasoning for Rose’s reinstatement:

Manfred wrote, “In my view, a determination must be made regarding how the phrase ‘permanently ineligible’ should be interpreted in light of the purposes and policies behind Rule 21, which are to: (1) protect the game from individuals who pose a risk to the integrity of the sport by prohibiting the participation of such individuals; and (2) create a deterrent effect that reduces the likelihood of future violations by others.

“In my view, once an individual has passed away, the purposes of Rule 21 have been served.”

Understandably, the Giamatti family is not happy.

Marcus Giamatti, son of the former commissioner who signed the agreement banning Rose, said in a statement he was “incredibly disappointed” in Manfred’s decision.

“I am also disappointed that my family was not consulted prior to this decision,” he said. “The Commissioner’s decision makes this a very dark day for baseball, the country and the fans.

“My father’s mission by banning Rose was to uphold the integrity of the game. Therefore, reinstating Rose in this manner puts that integrity, Rule 21 and everything that my father fought to uphold in peril.”

Pete Rose was suspended for life from baseball for betting on his own games and lying about it repeatedly. Given chance after chance to come clean, Rose refused. You won’t get any argument from me that Rose was a great baseball player, and perhaps that’s all some fans care about. Frankly, I’m sick of the arguments about whether Hall of Fame means only “Hall of Fame ball player” or “Hall of Fame human being.” After all, guys like notorious racist Cap Anson and all-around bad person Ty Cobb are in Cooperstown, so why not Pete Rose?

Well, let’s take a look at some of the filings from Rose’s defamation case against former prosecutor and Washington attorney John Dowd, whose 1989 report led to Rose’s ban from baseball.

A sworn statement by an unidentified woman, contained in a motion filed Monday in John Dowd's defense against Pete Rose's defamation lawsuit, alleges that Rose had a sexual relationship with the woman for several years in the 1970s, beginning before she turned 16.

In the majority of states, including Ohio -- where both the woman and Rose lived at the time -- the age of legal consent is 16, so her allegation amounts to statutory rape.

And I know what a lot of fans will say. “That’s an unproven allegation! People make up stories all the time!” Well, sure. But they don’t typically a) convince a federal prosecutor without some proof or credibility; and b) they generally don’t put their allegations in a court document and swear to it under oath.

And anyway, Rose admitted it happened.

Rose acknowledged he had a sexual relationship with the woman in court documents made public Monday, but he said his information and belief was that it started when she was 16. He was 34, married and the father of two children in 1975, when he says he began having sex with the woman, referred to in the filing as "Jane Doe." Rose said he does not recall how long the relationship lasted.

That’s great, Pete. Really good stuff. As you probably know, “I didn’t know how old she was!” is not a defense to statutory rape. According to the law, you’d better be damn sure how old someone is, and if you’re not damn sure, you shouldn’t be having sex with them. But Dowd isn’t the only investigator to tell this story about Rose.

In the interview, with a station in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Dowd said, "Michael Bertolini told us, you know, he not only ran bets, but ran young girls down at spring training, ages 12 to 14. Isn't that lovely? So that's statutory rape every time you do that."

Monday's filing by Dowd's attorneys also notes two journalists' references to Rose's relationships with young women -- in "Collision at Home Plate: The Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti" in 1991 by James Reston Jr., and in 2000 by USA Today's Jill Lieber Steeg in an ESPN SportsCentury documentary.

And Rose continued to be unapologetic about his relationship until late in life.

Pete Rose dismissed questions on Sunday about his first appearance on the field in Philadelphia since the franchise scrapped plans in 2017 to honor him because of a woman's allegation that baseball's hit king had sex with her when she was a minor.

"It was 55 years ago, babe," Rose told a female baseball writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

I would have immediately kicked old, broken-down Pete Rose in the balls.

This is the guy that Rob Manfred decided he had to remove from the “lifetime ban” list posthumously. Who was clamoring for this? What’s the point? Was it Trump? God, tell me it wasn’t Trump.

As I have said many times, if you’re good enough at a sport, there is nothing you can’t do to a woman and be forgiven for it.

There are undoubtedly lots of bad people unknowingly inducted into Cooperstown. But when we know better, aren’t we obligated to do better? How, exactly, does Rob Manfred explain this to all the little girls out there who are playing baseball, many of whom aren’t much younger than the woman who accused Rose?

I’m fine with the 1919 White Sox being reinstated. Happy, even, for Buck Weaver (hit .324 in the ‘19 World Series) and Joe Jackson (hit .375 in the ‘19 World Series with a perfect fielding percentage). But Pete Rose is a bridge too far. I’m exhausted by having to constantly remind the men who control sports that women are human beings and that our experiences with the men who play professional sports matter.

Elsewhere in news today: Trump embarrasses us in Saudi Arabia; Yet another Joe Biden exposè is out; Remembering the MOVE bombing; and The High Note.

Here we go.

(puts bag over head)

Our current president is so openly corrupt and so easily bought that the Saudis only had to do this to have him eating out of their hands.

It’s bad enough when Americans go overseas and immediately start screaming about finding the closest McDonald’s, but this is so much worse.

Here’s where I’ll take a moment to remind you that the Saudis killed WaPo journalist Jamal Khashoggi, imprison and torture women who use social media to advocate for women’s rights, impose the death penalty for same-sex relationships, and behead people in mass executions. What a great country to hang out in!

The president couldn’t stop smiling, and understandably so. The Saudi royals are his friends and allies. They are his family’s business partners. More than most, they understand his tastes and desires.

“I really believe we like each other a lot,” Mr. Trump said, as he sat beside the crown prince inside the king’s executive office.

As he strolled with Prince Mohammed through the Royal Court, the president appeared impressed by his surroundings. Gold leaf was everywhere: the moldings and the tables and the legs of the blue velvet armchairs were all gilded.

I saw a clip earlier of Trump saying, “Ah, what I wouldn’t do for the Prince.” That “Prince” ordered the hit on Khashoggi.

Of course, not a single reporter in the pool will ask Trump about Khashoggi or any of the women being held for espousing feminist principles. It’s been years since the Saudis began trying to “sportswash” their image, and it’s working brilliantly. Hell, even the WTA, an organization that has been at the forefront of the push for equal pay, is holding events in Riyadh, and the Kingdom has been awarded the 2034 World Cup.

This is one of those times when it feels like I’m constantly screaming “CARE MORE!!” into the void.

Another Biden exposé drops

Today, the New Yorker published an excerpt from the latest book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, entitled Original Sin. The headline on the story is “How Joe Biden handed the Presidency to Donald Trump.” Yikes.

The New Yorker doesn’t have gift links, but if you really want to read the whole thing, let me know and I’l figure out a way to get it to you.

President Joe Biden got out of bed the day after the 2024 election convinced that he had been wronged. The élites, the Democratic officials, the media, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama—they shouldn’t have pushed him out of the race. If he had stayed in, he would have beaten Donald Trump. That’s what the polls suggested, he would say again and again.

His pollsters told us that no such polls existed. There was no credible data, they said, to support the notion that he would have won. All unspun information suggested it would have been a loss, likely a spectacular one, far worse than that suffered by his replacement as the Democratic nominee, Vice-President Kamala Harris.

His pollsters told us that no such polls existed. There was no credible data, they said, to support the notion that he would have won. All unspun information suggested it would have been a loss, likely a spectacular one, far worse than that suffered by his replacement as the Democratic nominee, Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Well, we’re not off to a great start here, Joe.

I’m of the belief that Biden simply decided to drop out too late to give Kamala Harris any real chance, even though I was convinced that she would win in a landslide. More fool I for thinking Americans learned their lesson after the first Trump term.

If you were wondering, David Plouffe is not over it.

“We got so screwed by Biden, as a party,” David Plouffe, who helped run the Harris campaign, told us. Plouffe had served as Senator Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign manager in 2008 and as a senior adviser to President Obama before largely retiring from politics in 2013. After Biden dropped out of the race, on July 21, 2024, Plouffe was drafted to help Harris in what he saw as a “rescue mission.” Harris, he said, was a “great soldier,” but the compressed hundred-and-seven-day race was “a fucking nightmare.”

“And it’s all Biden,” Plouffe said. By deciding to run for reëlection and then waiting more than three weeks after the debate to bow out, Plouffe added, “He totally fucked us.”

This is only a small part of the book, and every incident described in this chapter gets worse. I guess I hate George Clooney a little less than I did before reading this. At the time, I thought his op-ed about Biden needing to drop out was so poorly-timed that it might as well have come from the GOP. But after reading his reasoning, I at least understand where he was coming from.

Biden hobbled out from around the corner. Clooney knew that the President had just arrived from the G-7 leaders’ summit in Apulia, Italy, that morning and might be tired, but, holy shit, he wasn’t expecting this.

The President appeared severely diminished, as if he’d aged a decade since Clooney last saw him, in December, 2022. He was taking tiny steps, and an aide seemed to be guiding him by the arm.

“It was like watching someone who was not alive,” a Hollywood V.I.P. recalled. “It was startling. And we all looked at each other. It was so awful.”

The piece goes on to describe Biden's failure to recognize Clooney (who flew in from Tuscany to lend his Hollywood aura to the receiving line at an A-list fundraiser), whom Biden had known since 2006. Their long-standing relationship aside, how do you not recognize George Clooney?

This piece is getting a lot of criticism over on Bluesky, with people calling it a “hit job” and claiming it was written to embarrass Biden. I don’t know if any of that is true, but I do know that we are currently beset with octogenarians in our federal government, primarily in Congress. I’m still thinking about this quote from an 83-year-old James Clyburn.

“Nancy left her seat. Steny left his seat. I left my seat. What the hell I’m supposed to do now?” Clyburn told the Journal. “What do you want—me to give up my life?”

***

As the Journal pointed out, nearly 40% of congressional Democrats are 65 or older, compared to just under 30% for Republicans. The age issue reared its head again after House Democrats elected 74-year-old Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) to serve as ranking member on the Oversight Committee over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) – despite having esophageal cancer. Since then, Connolly’s condition worsened, forcing him to step down.

Am I going insane? How is retirement in your 80s “giving up one’s life?” I’d happily retire right now if I could afford it. So yes, James. That’s what I want you to do. I want you to sit on your front porch, bathe in the golden glow of all the good you’ve done, and give sage advice to younger lawmakers. I want Gen X to get their chance to lead. That is what I want.

Remembering the MOVE bombing

It’s been 40 years since the Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on an American city block, killing 11 people, five of them children. I didn’t learn about the MOVE bombing until my 40s, which begs the question of what the hell is going on with our history education in this country?

Teach history. On May 13, 1985, over 500 Philly police fired over 10,000 rounds into dozens of Black homes. Then, cops bombed the larger block—using explosives including C4 explosives provided by FBI. Only 2 survived—one of whom was later jailed for 7 yrs on bs charges. No police were charged.

— Jay Perk [he] ⚖️ (@johnathanperk.bsky.social)2025-01-31T16:08:47.390Z

There’s a good retrospective of the bombing at WHYY, Philly’s PBS station.

“It was one of the most devastating days in the modern history of the city,” said MOVE Commission chairman William Brown. “Nearly two square blocks of a comfortable residential area lay wasted by fire. Sixty-one families, some 250 men, women and children were homeless. Their achievements and aspirations consumed in the terrible fire that we all watched on our TV sets.”

However, I learned about the MOVE bombing from one of my favorite podcasts, Stuff You Missed in History Class, and I’m partial to others hearing that episode.

In a really chilling coda to this story, the remains of some of those killed in the bombing, including 12-year-old Delisha Africa, were discovered in 2024 at the Penn Museum.

The remains were discovered during a comprehensive inventory that the Penn Museum conducted to prepare thousands of artifacts, some dating back more than a century, to be moved into upgraded storage facilities.

In 2021, museum officials acknowledged that the university had retained bones from at least one bombing victim after helping with the forensic identification process in the wake of the bombing. A short time later, the city notified family members that there was a box of remains at the medical examiner’s office that had been kept after the autopsies were completed.

The museum said it's not known how the remains found this week were separated from the rest, and it immediately notified the child's family upon the discovery.

May we never be so violent and so inhumane towards our own ever again.

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

Today, please enjoy Nate Bargatze showing Jimmy Fallon (bleh) his “Darth Vader watch.”

I know it’s a bit, but something about his deadpan delivery destroys me every time.

Survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

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