In a momentary fit of pique, I sent an e-mail to a pal the other day announcing my plan to write a column urging Rush Limbaugh to confess and “Charlie Hustle” to shut up and go away. “Don’t you have
In a momentary fit of pique, I sent an e-mail to a pal the other day announcing my plan to write a column urging Rush Limbaugh to confess and “Charlie Hustle” to shut up and go away. “Don’t you have that backwards?” he responded.
Upon reflection, I realized he was mostly right. The bombastic star of right-wing talk radio can’t confess any more than he already has without risking serious jail time, while the unrepentant baseball player Pete Rose has no sins left to admit except betting against his own team, which few who saw him can imagine he ever did. What the two have in common besides grandiose egos, however, is that neither knows the meaning of shame. So, upon further reflection, I hope they should both shut up and go away.
Fat chance. Of the two, Limbaugh’s playing the more dangerous game. After spending most of his career preaching self-reliance and personal responsibility to his gullible listeners, he admitted his addiction to narcotic painkillers and did a stretch in rehab. Lately, however, he’s been blaming his troubles on political enemies who have somehow infiltrated the criminal justice system.
“I’m not whining about it,” Limbaugh whined on his radio program. “My friends, it is, and has been, obvious to me for the longest time that all these leaks were an attempt to try me in the court of public opinion. The Democrats in this country still cannot defeat me in the arena of political ideas, and so now they are trying to do so in the court of public opinion and the legal system.”
Almost needless to say, Limbaugh has long idolized Kenneth Starr, leaker extraordinaire. But because he rarely takes calls from informed listeners and cuts off skeptics who bluff past his screeners, there was nobody to ask how Federal prosecutors under Attorney General John Ashcroft have fallen under the spell of left-wing conspirators. He says investigators who subpoenaed his medical records to learn if he was “doctor shopping” for bogus prescriptions are violating his privacy.
His attorney, Roy Black, has told a Florida judge that Limbaugh is the victim of political persecution. He says the scores of cash transfers that investigators suspect hid drug transactions were actually blackmail paid to the maid who eventually blew the whistle. An innocent man is hard to blackmail, but you can always count on an addict to tell a complicated story.
Ironically, Limbaugh’s broadcast lamentations are likely only to anger prosecutors and make political intervention more dangerous to potential allies. If he weren’t such a big crybaby, he’d be well-advised to shut up and let his lawyer do the talking.
Pete Rose’s public hissy fit appears far more likely to get him what he wants, which is money and a plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Purely on the basis of his record on the field, few players have ever deserved it more. Rose’s career record of 4,256 base hits over 24 years will certainly never be broken in my lifetime, maybe never. For the uninitiated, “Charlie Hustle” was the nickname bestowed upon him by future Hall of Famers Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford after watching the Cincinnati Reds infielder doing his mad chipmunk act during spring training in 1963 — running out bases on balls, reckless headfirst slides and hyper-aggressive play. Intended derisively, it became a proud trademark.
Many fans idolized Rose’s manic style. To others, his career vividly refuted the naive idea that winning ballgames has anything to do with character. My late father and I used to argue about him. Dad, who also loved the racetrack, couldn’t get enough of Rose’s pugnacity. He never lived to see the disgrace Rose made of himself after he quit playing, began gambling on baseball working as manager for the Reds (absolutely forbidden after the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” colluded with bookies to fix the World Series), then brazenly lied about it for 14 years even after being confronted by irrefutable evidence. He even lied about it in his autobiography, written with the brilliant baseball writer Roger Kahn.
Now Charlie Hustle has a new book to hustle, admits he lied, and, like Limbaugh, wants us to feel sorry for him. He whines that “baseball had no fancy rehab for gamblers like they do for drug addicts.” He expects us to believe that he never wagered against his own team, and I do, because no bookie would be dumb enough to take that bet. Making third party bets on games he could influence would have gotten his legs broken. Rose’s other angle is the hope sportswriters will vote him into the Hall of Fame before his eligibility passes to the veteran’s committee, which probably wouldn’t.
My view? Vote him in. It’s a baseball museum, not a cathedral. But let his plaque record that he gambled on baseball, and was banished permanently from the game.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a national magazine award winner and co-author of “The Hunting of the President” (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at mailto:genelyons2@cs.com.
Copyright 2004, Newspaper Enterprise Assn.
