Drew Magary, writing Funbag for Defector, answers an email sent in by some dude named Ben regarding Pete Rose and the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Whoever lies the loudest in 2025 America wins, and this is the result. I’m so used to being lied to now that I barely register it. Think about how many lies you and I encounter every day. We’re lied to by politicians, influencers, ads, sports leagues, the media, product packaging, random social media accounts, and customer service representatives. The default setting of this country is to spew bullshit, which reduces lying from a cardinal sin to background noise. It’s not that the American people admire liars. It’s just that they don’t care if people lie, so long as they enjoy whatever lie they’re being fed. Only Roger Goodell still adheres to the “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup” approach to wrongdoing, and guess what? Everyone thinks he’s a dipshit for it. Even me.

This brings us to Pete Rose, whose offenses are so legion that “being Pete Rose” is more than enough of an offense to merit his banishment from OTB parlors, let alone the Baseball Hall of Fame. The gambling and the lying are now baked into his name, which is why Trump was so eager to free his ghost. I could go out of my way, like Ben here, to remind everyone about the extent of Rose’s lying, but I already know that most of us have exhausted our outrage reserves. Trump wanted Rose reinstated, and Manfred will do anything that anyone above him tells him to do. That doesn’t mean that you and I have to think of Rose as vindicated. He’s still the exact same Pete Rose he was before all of this, and I’d still piss on his corpse if there were five bucks in it for me.

Do you know the funny thing about all of this? If Pete Rose had never been banned by Paul Giamatti’s dad all those years ago, we’d have all been better off. I know that banning him was the right move, but it’s kept Pete Rose in the national conversation ever since. If he had been inducted into Cooperstown in 1991, his story would have died off, and him along with it. Ichiro Suzuki would have become the all-time hit king in the hearts of many (myself included), with Rose’s on-field accomplishments growing ever smaller in the public imagination.

That remains a possibility, especially now that Rose is eligible. Every year that man is kept out of the Hall—and I assume the BBWAA will deny him entrance even now, because they never let anyone not named Jeter in anymore—is another year that I have to hear about his sorry ass. Pete Rose was a world-class shitbag, and he’s dead now. Fuck him. Go ahead and induct him so that I all of us can stick a wad of used chewing gum on his plaque. This is a rare instance where justice hasn’t been worth it.

I find it unsurprising that I feel pretty much exactly the same way.