Most of all, I just want the issue of Pete Rose and the Hall of Fame to disappear.

I always felt that there was ample evidence that Rose bet on baseball, including bets on his own team while he was managing. His denials since these disclosures have included misrepresenations of what was in the public record at the tmime, further rendering his innocence unlikely to me. And his combative stance in making those denials was an abuse of his popularity, villainizing those with more integrity than he has.

Now, with his admission that he did bet on the game, we are re-confronted with the question of whether he should be in the Hall of Fame.

I don't care.

You can make an argument that Rose should be forgiven, that gambling is an illness that makes no distinction between betting on someone else's team and betting on your own. You can make an argument that he committed what serves as the closest thing to original sin in baseball, and that he should be kept out.

But my bottom line is that we should be talking about the perils of gambing addiction, about the difficult morality of admitting your guilt, about why baseball has the no-gambling rule in the first place. But enough angst over Pete himself. The last thing this guy deserves is the spotlight.

Wishful thinking on my part. It's because the issue of his Hall of Fame election is Ground Zero for all the above philosophical discussions, with arguments on either side, that it won't go away.

Where is Sophocles when you need him? He's the guy that would make this a morality play worth watching.