Kuzul

After being banned from the sport in 1989, Pete Rose is finally coming back to baseball—as a television analyst for Fox Sports.  

According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, Rose has signed a deal to be a guest analyst on various television programs on the family of networks:

Rose will serve FOX as a guest analyst for the MLB on FOX pregame show on FOX and FOX Sports 1 and will also appear on “MLB Whiparound,” “America’s Pregame” and “FOX Sports Live” on FOX Sports 1. …

… FOX officials say they are hiring Rose for his on-air presence and that he will make for compelling television regardless of how one views his controversial past.

Rose, 74, is quoted in Rosenthal‘s report as saying he enjoys “talking baseball, and that’s what this is all about. Enjoying the game of baseball, sitting in the green room watching two or three games, getting on TV and talking about it. It’s right up my alley, I think.”

As far as MLB’s reaction to Rose’s hiring, Rosenthal spoke to MLB Chief Communications Officer Pat Courtney, who said the “decision to hire on-air talent for its telecasts rests solely with Fox” since the network doesn’t have to receive permission about television talent despite being a broadcast partner. 

Rose’s hiring as a Fox analyst comes at a time when he is trying once again to have his lifetime ban from MLB lifted, as CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman reported in March:

While there is likely a long way to go before Rose knows if he will ever be reinstated by new MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, the all-time hit king does get the opportunity to discuss the sport on a national stage and share insights. 

At the very least, Rose can provide a boost to Fox Sports’ coverage simply by being a unique, entertaining presence. Time will tell if he has all the necessary skills to be a thoughtful and insightful analyst, but at least he has a lively personality that everyone knows. 

This may not be the exact return to baseball that some fans have wanted for Rose, but now he’ll be back around the game on a regular basis. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

All-time hits king Pete Rose appears to hope a third MLB commissioner will be the charm in applying for reinstatement to the sport. New commissioner Robert Manfred confirmed Monday that Rose has applied again to have his lifetime ban lifted.   

“I want to make sure I understand all of the details of the Dowd Report and Commissioner [Bart] Giamatti’s decision and the agreement that was ultimately reached,” Manfred said, per Mark Saxon of ESPN.com. “I want to hear what Pete has to say, and I’ll make a decision once I’ve done that.”

MLBPA president Tony Clark told Anthony Castrovince of MLB.com that he is in favor of Rose’s reinstatement.

Jayson Stark of ESPN provided more comments from Clark on Rose:

Asked to explain his reasoning, Clark said of Rose: “He made a decision. He made a decision that was not the right decision. He made a decision that he has paid a price for.”

Clark chose his words carefully, but when he was asked if he believes that Rose has served his time, he replied, succinctly: “Yes. I would love for there to be a consideration made, on behalf of the commissioner’s office, that would take that into account, in reinstating him.”

He was then asked if he would be in favor of full reinstatement. Clark thought about the question for several seconds, then said, simply: “Reinstatement.”

Rose, 73, was permanently banned from the sport in 1989 amid allegations he gambled on baseball while serving as the manager of the Cincinnati Reds. He signed an agreement with then-commissioner Bart Giamatti to be placed on the permanently ineligible list, though at the time he maintained his innocence. Rose has since admitted to gambling on the sport on a number of occasions, including in an autobiography published in 2004.

Despite accepting the punishment, Rose has on repeatedly petitioned for reinstatement. Both of Manfred’s predecessors, Fay Vincent and Bud Selig, have denied those requests. Vincent told Steven Marcus of Newsday in February he believes Manfred should not consider a reinstatement, citing Rose’s case as a deterrent to gamblers:

The Pete Rose case is not about Pete Rose, so the issue of ‘has he served his time, does he deserve mercy?’ is in my book irrelevant. This issue has always been the deterrent in baseball against gambling [and] is almost perfectly successful. It never happens, and the reason it doesn’t happen is if you touch that third rail, you’re out of baseball for life whether you’re a Hall of Famer or not, and nobody’s ever been reinstated.

Back in February, Craig Calcaterra of NBC Sports’ Hardball Talk weighed in on whether Rose should be reinstated considering the origin of the ban: 

As to the point of mercy: I wish the people who argue for Rose’s reinstatement — those who claim he has served “long enough” — would remember a few things about the time Rose has served. That his sentence was one he agreed to, voluntarily and with full knowledge that it was intended to be permanent. That he has served a ban at which he constantly thumbed his nose while lying to both those who had his potential reinstatement in their hands and the fans who were played for idiots for years until Rose finally, and calculatedly, decided to come clean in 2004. That his coming clean was to sell books.  I’m all for mercy. But there aren’t a lot of inmates serving life sentences who have their time commuted to 25 years. There are even fewer of them who get that treatment after failing to serve their time with good behavior. That’s where Rose is.

Which isn’t to say that baseball shouldn’t reinstate him. Again, no real harm will be done if it did. But let us not pretend that baseball owes Pete Rose anything or that Pete Rose deserves anything. If baseball were to reinstate him it would be a 100% free, selfless and charitable act. The sort of act with which Pete Rose is not, as far as can be told, personally familiar with.

Rose made 17 All-Star teams, won three World Series titles and was the 1973 National League MVP. He holds the MLB record for most career hits (4,256) and games played (3,562).

He has not come close to making the Hall of Fame due to his banishment. It remains to be seen how Manfred will view Rose’s petition, but if he’s reinstated, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Rose doesn’t make it to Cooperstown.

Follow Tyler Conway (@tylerconway22) on Twitter

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Charlie Hustle, for 25 years now, has been waiting for a second chance that continues to outsprint him.

When is a lifetime ban long enough?

When that life ends? At an arbitrary juncture sometime before? Perhaps when that life has reasonably passed the point where the man can do much more with the tools of his trade other than sit and reminisce?

Now, 25 years to the day (Sunday) Pete Rose was suspended for life by then-commissioner Bart Giamatti, the stars are realigning and the rows of corn are rearranging in baseball’s Field of Dreams. Two upcoming events now are positioned for what probably will be Rose’s last, best chance for reinstatement:

• Commissioner-elect Rob Manfred is set to replace Bud Selig on Jan. 25.
• The All-Star Game is scheduled for Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park on July 14.

So maybe right now is the time to begin the discussion surrounding whether Rose has done his time, enough time, and maybe the game should move toward some sort of reinstatement.

Mr. Manfred, tear down that wall.

While Selig would not offer details of what might happen in Cincinnati next July, he hinted that Rose will be allowed on the fringes.

“That will be up to the Cincinnati club, and they know what they can do and can’t do,” Selig said last month during his annual All-Star Game meeting with the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. “It’s sort of been subjective. They’ve done some things with Pete, but they’ve been very, very thoughtful and limited. But that’s a subject that I’m sure they’ll discuss next year.”

So let’s begin that discussion.

First, understand: Rose broke baseball’s most sacred rule—no betting on the game—and he should have been harshly punished. He has been. No man who is still living has been iced for as long as Rose. Life with the Ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson surely has been interminable.

So let’s all agree on that. And from here, if you want to keep Rose locked up in solitary until he ascends (or descends, your pick) to meet Ty Cobb in the Great Hereafter, I respect that.

Rose long ago wrote his own future first by committing the crime, then by lying about it for 15 years. Even after voluntarily accepting the ban from Giamatti on Aug. 24, 1989, he still denied that he bet on the game. This surely killed any chance he had at leniency.

That Giamatti stunningly died of a heart attack just eight days after sentencing Rose further complicated things. Had he lived, would Giamatti eventually have commuted Rose’s lifetime ban? We’ll never know.

What we do know is that in the NFL, in 1963, then-commissioner Pete Rozelle suspended the Lions’ Alex Karras and the Packers’ Paul Hornung for one season for gambling crimes that included betting on their own teams.

Looking back, those suspensions were shockingly light.

But they do make you wonder: Is 25 years enough?

Understandably, baseball has carried a zero-tolerance policy where gambling is concerned since the Black Sox Scandal that fixed the 1919 World Series (the Sox’s opponents, interestingly, were the Cincinnati Reds).

Unlike the Black Sox, Rose never was accused of fixing games. The Dowd Report documented that he gambled on Reds games between 1985 and 1987. He was a player-manager in 1985-86, then retired as a player and solely managed in ’87.

He did the crime.

And he hasn’t been allowed in the game on an official basis since.

At 73, Pete Rose is not going to manage. He’s not going to pull on a uniform and affect the outcome of games. He’s been away for far too long. Besides, baseball can bend and twist rules as it sees fit (see the Giants’ protest from Chicago this week involving the rain and the tarp).

What about at least taking him off the permanently ineligible list and, even if you tell clubs he’s off-limits as a manager, allowing him to, say, work as a guest hitting coach for the Reds during spring training (if they’ll have him)? Or volunteer during the season?

As things stand right now, Rose is barred from going anywhere in a ballpark that a regular fan cannot go.

Except, and here is where hypocrisy steps to the plate, MLB allowed him to participate in an All-Century Team celebration at the 1999 World Series. It also permitted Rose to take part in festivities at Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park in 2010 marking the 25th anniversary of his record-setting 4,192nd hit.

But he is conspicuously missing in other celebrations, such as when the Reds closed Riverfront Stadium, or when the Phillies closed Veterans Stadium.

There comes a point where it is unconscionable to trot Rose out like a show horse for some occasions and keep him locked in the barn like a glue horse for others.

One of Manfred’s biggest challenges will be to reconnect with a generation of young fans who slept through the World Series games of their youth because baseball long ago sold its soul to television.

Yes, Rose was well before their time. He’s been in the hole for so long that he was from their grandparents’ time.

Still, at this point, Rose can be an asset for baseball. As he will be the first to tell you, nobody can sell baseball like Pete Rose (well, maybe after he’s done selling Pete Rose).

His enthusiasm remains contagious. The first question he asked a couple of writers when at Cooperstown, New York, last month was whether they thought there was any chance Derek Jeter would be elected to the Hall of Fame unanimously.

Manfred, so far, has not tipped his hand as to how he will approach the application for reinstatement Rose filed way back in 2002, the one Selig has just let sit there like a piece of junk mail. There are those who believe Manfred will keep Rose on ice because, after 20 years working in the commissioner’s office, he’s been conditioned to lean that way.

Then again, unlike Selig, who was very close with Giamatti, Manfred has no personal ties to Giamatti and 1989.

It’s difficult to predict how he will play it, and so far, there are no tea leaves to read.

But can you imagine the scene in Cincinnati next July if an apologetic and rehabilitated Rose is reinstated back into baseball’s clubhouse?

It is one of sports’ longest-running and most enduring tragedies, how a man with the most hits (4,256), games played (3,562), at-bats (14,053) and times on base (5,929) of anybody in baseball history is locked out of the game for good.

As he told ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap recently for an Outside the Lines special on the 25th anniversary of his lifetime suspension, “I’ve been led to believe America is a forgiving country, and if you do the right things—keep your nose clean, be a good citizen, pay your taxes, do all the things you’re supposed to do—eventually you’ll get a second chance.”

Now is a good time for eventually.

Forgiveness can be an incredibly complicated concept. As a Hall of Fame voter, I do not vote for Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire or any of the suspected performance-enhancing drug cheaters.

Granted, the PED scandal is totally different from that of Rose.

Still, though, I wonder: In a quarter of a century, will I change my mind?

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. He has over two decades of experience covering MLB, including 14 years as a national baseball columnist at CBSSports.com.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball @ScottMillerBbl. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

It’s now been 25 years since Pete Rose accepted a permanent ban for betting on baseball, and it’s still one of the most hotly debated topics in all of professional sports.

Rose retired following the 1986 season as the sport’s all-time leader with 4,256 hits and 3,562 games played. It was his tenacious style of play that made him a fan favorite and the heart and soul of the Big Red Machine.

He took over as player/manager for the Reds in 1984, and all told he spent parts of six seasons as the Cincinnati Reds’ manager.

It was during his time at the helm that he started betting on the Reds, and doing so on a regular basis, according to what he said back in 2007.

“I bet on my team to win every night because I love my team, I believe in my team,” Rose said on ESPN Radio. “I did everything in my power every night to win that game.”

For nearly 15 years he denied the allegations against him, until he released his autobiography My Prison Without Bars in January 2004 and finally came clean about his gambling.

Let’s start at the beginning, though.

The snowball officially started rolling Feb. 21, 1989, when Rose was called in to meet with Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and other league officials to talk about his gambling habits. He was well-known to be a gambler, but suspicions had cropped up that he was betting on baseball.

On Apr. 1, the IRS seized betting slips with Rose’s name, writing and finger prints on them, and the following day it was reported that he was betting $8,000-$10,000 per day on baseball.

A month later, the league announced it was launching a full investigation. On May 9, 1989, a 225-page report from investigator John Dowd that would be known simply as the “Dowd Report” was handed over to new Commissioner Bart Giamatti.

The report included a full breakdown of his gambling activities, including a day-by-day account of his 1987 betting that included 52 Reds games.

From there, the league officially handed down a lifetime ban on Aug. 24, 1989. Both Rose and Giamatti signed a five-page document to put the ban into place, though Rose still did not admit to any transgressions.

The gist of the document was that Rose accepted he was being banned on factual basis, while Major League Baseball agreed to make no formal findings in the case against him.

“As you can imagine, this is a very sad day,” Rose said in a Los Angeles Times article. “I’ve been in baseball three decades, and to think I’m going to be out of baseball for a very short period of time hurts.”

As part of the agreement he signed, he would be allowed to appeal the lifetime ban after one year, so his thinking at the time was obviously that he would be able to convince the commissioner to lift the ban.

After serving a five-month prison sentence in 1990 for falsifying tax returns, Rose was dealt another blow in 1991 when the 12 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame’s board of directors voted unanimously to ban him from the ballot.

He received 41 write-in votes that next year, and his Hall of Fame candidacy is something that is still debated on a yearly basis.

Those arguing for him say his gambling indiscretions had no impact on his on-field play. On the flip side, he sullied the game and earned a lifetime ban as a result, so it’s hard to say he belongs among the game’s immortals.

The debate waged on until 1999, when Rose was named to the All-Century team and allowed to be part of the festivities when the team was announced during Game 2 of the World Series that year.

After receiving the loudest ovation of all, he was grilled by NBC reporter Jim Gray on the national TV, who tried to get Rose to admit he did in fact bet on baseball and apologize for what he did.

From there, all was quiet on the Pete Rose front for a while, until he finally came clean about everything in the aforementioned autobiography.

“For the last 14 years I’ve consistently heard the statement: ‘If Pete Rose came clean, all would be forgiven.’ Well, I’ve done what you’ve asked,” he wrote in the book, via USA Today‘s Mike Dodd.

It wasn’t that simple, though. Rose remains banned, and there have been no real signs of that being overturned.

The New York Daily News‘ Bill Madden reported July 27, 2009, that Commissioner Bud Selig was seriously considering lifting the ban, but those rumors were quickly shot down.

Despite that, Rose still had faith that Selig would one day pull the trigger on reinstating him.

“Really, where I belong is back in baseball. I still believe it can happen,” Rose told Bob Nightengale of USA Today. “To be honest with you, I really haven’t given up on Bud giving me a second chance.”

With Selig set to leave office at the end of the season, replaced by his right-hand man Rob Manfred, Rose will have a new commissioner to work on.

One thing is certain: The now-73-year-old Rose is never going to stop pleading his case for reinstatement and Hall of Fame eligibility, and fans aren’t going to stop debating it any time soon either.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

MLB‘s all-time hit king Pete Rose opened up with CNN’s Rachel Nichols about his lifetime ban from the game in an interview for Unguarded.

With next year’s All-Star Game scheduled to take place at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, Rose was asked about Bud Selig’s recent comments indicating Rose could take part in the week’s festivities, per C. Trent Rosecrans of The Cincinnati Enquirer.

The 73-year-old responded in the interview that they’ll let him on the field one day, but “then it’s back in prison the next day.” He added that his family has also been affected by the aftermath of his indefinite leave from the game.

Although Rose remains banned from the league, it hasn’t precluded him from taking part in official MLB events in the past.

He was honored as part of the All-Century Team during the 1999 World Series, which was his first major appearance in an MLB stadium since his ban was handed down a decade earlier. In 2010, Rose was on hand in Cincinnati when the Reds celebrated the 25th anniversary of his record-breaking 4,192nd hit.

Selig spoke to the Baseball Writers’ Association of America about Rose’s possible involvement in next year’s Midsummer Classic:

That’ll be up to the Cincinnati club, and they know what they can do and they can’t do. They’ve been very good about that. We haven’t had that discussion. It’s sort of subjective, they’ve done some things with Pete, but they’ve been very, very thoughtful and limited. That’s a subject that I’m sure they’ll discuss in the next year.

The outgoing commissioner also made a statement about possibly overturning Rose’s ban.

“It’s a matter under advisement. That’s my standard line,” said Selig. “I’m the judge and that’s where it’ll stay. There’s nothing new.”

If Rose does attend the 2015 All-Star Game, it would appear that it will only be a momentary reprieve.

Catch Unguarded with Rachel Nichols on CNN this Friday night at 10:30 p.m. ET.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

When the MLB All-Star Game comes to Cincinnati in 2015, longtime Reds star Pete Rose will be allowed to play a role in the festivities despite his lifetime ban from the sport.    

“That’ll be up to the Cincinnati club, and they know what they can do and they can’t do,” MLB commissioner Bud Selig told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America Tuesday, via the Cincinnati Enquirer‘s C. Trent Rosecrans. “They’ve been very good about that. We haven’t had that discussion.”

Reds owner Bob Castellini made clear his team’s intentions: “We plan on using him wherever Major League Baseball is comfortable with, but we’re certainly going to include him.”

Rose, who spent 19 of his 24 seasons playing with the Reds and another seven as manager (three of those seasons overlapped, when he served as player/manager), was banned from baseball in 1989 when an investigation revealed he had bet on his team. 

Even so, as the all-time MLB hits leader and a crucial part of Cincinnati’s baseball history, Rose’s exclusion from the All-Star festivities at Great American Ball Park would feel wrong. Especially since the team has twice “officially recognized” the 73-year-old in Cincinnati since his ban, per Rosecrans. 

Moreover, as ESPN’s Jessamyn McIntyre alluded to, perhaps this is a step toward lifting Rose’s ban and getting him into the Hall of Fame: 

Selig, however, kept a familiar stance when it came to that particular topic. 

“It’s a matter under advisement. That’s my standard line,” the commissioner said, via Rosecrans. “I’m the judge and that’s where it’ll stay. There’s nothing new.”

Still, perhaps this is a sign of baby steps when it comes to MLB’s firm stand on Rose. It’s not likely that his lifetime ban will be lifted anytime soon, but it’s at least encouraging to see him rightfully included in what will be a celebration of Cincy’s baseball past. 

The MLB All-Star Game always provides plenty of excitement among fans and players. Rose’s role in the festivities next year will only add another level of intrigue.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Pete Rose, baseball’s giant who seems destined to be on the outside looking in, will premiere his TLC reality series with fiancee, Kiana Kim. 

The show, entitled Pete Rose: Hits and Mrs., follows the former Cincinnati Reds superstar who continues to fight his lifetime ban from the game of baseball. 

This being a TLC reality/TV series, you know things are not nearly as simple as that. 

Below is a primer on all things Pete Rose, brought to you by an interview from the network. Thankfully, it’s candid and introspective. 

From there, we get a look into the mind of man who bet on the game, and I will bet you could see some more of this legend who is broken in a lot of ways. 

Well, you get just that starting on Sunday at 10 p.m. with a two-episode sneak preview. The show will then be run again on Monday at the same time—its regular time slot. 

Let me just go ahead and say I don’t have a great feeling about this one, and it has everything to do with what reality TV has become, especially on the network of Honey Boo-Boo. 

Cincinnati.com has a video of the first commercial for the show, and it’s pretty much your typical ad for a reality-televison program with the same beats and the same plot points. 

It’s my hope that this show is something better. 

You might recall the 30 for 30 documentary done on Rose for ESPN. It was about eight minutes of footage that confirmed for me this baseball legend had an amazing story to tell, even from behind a table where he signs autographs. 

An old man selling his signature hardly sells for the masses who watch reality shows, so some additions were made. 

Again, we will go ahead and make a better judgement when we see it all unfold in the premiere, but the aforementioned commercial leads us to believe a good portion of the show will be based on Kiana Kim wanting to get married, the backlash from her family and what Kim looks like in a dress. 

Perhaps, if there is time, there might be some baseball talk. 

Hit me up on Twitter for more Haterade. 

Follow @gabezal

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

When the 2013 Yankee season begins, Derek Jeter‘s magic number to break Pete Rose’s all-time hit record will be at 953. Following Jeter’s league-leading 216-hit 2012 season, suddenly Pete’s hit record is within vision of the Yankee captain—at triple digits. At 3,304 hits, Derek Jeter is 77.6 percent of the way home to setting a new all-time hit record.

No doubt about it, 953 hits is still a long way to go for Derek Jeter. When the season begins, Derek will be 38 years of age. The sceptics will bring the proverbial clock into play, when scoffing at Jeter’s chances. But, is that clock really moving too fast for Derek, given his tireless work ethic and proven track record?

Pete Rose, at approximately the same age as Jeter is now, played another seven seasons to get his final 884 hits.  To Rose’s advantage, as manager later in his career, he had the option of inserting himself into the lineup as he saw fit. To Derek’s advantage, only in two of Roses final seven seasons did he obtain over 170 hits.  In three of them, Pete had 107 or fewer.  

That bodes well for Jeter, where there has been no indication of the Yankees utilizing him in a platoon role (in the foreseeable future). For his career, Derek averages 193 hits per season. Granted, no one is expecting him to continue at that pace for another five-plus seasons.

However, even if Derek’s hit production dropped considerably, he can still be well within range of the hit record by the age of 44 (if playing is still an option or possibility). 

On the other hand, we are talking about Derek Jeter here. What happens if Derek hammers out close to 400 hits over the next two seasons? Contract negotiations could become especially juicy, with the all-time hit record within the Yankees’ grasp.

Before jumping too far ahead, there are questions to be answered regarding Jeter’s ankle, entering the season. The good news is, Derek’s rehab is going according to plan and he is expected back for Opening Day, as reported by Mark Feinsand on Blogging the Bombers for the Daily News.

From the consistent high level of productivity Derek Jeter has displayed over the course of his career, I believe the all-time hit record is his for the taking—if he wants it. That, is the big question.

If he does, and avoids serious injuries during the coming seasons, Derek Jeter becoming the all-time hit leader may be inevitable.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Pete Rose sees you, Derek Jeter.

Jeter isn’t looking like a 38-year-old player this season. Typically, 38-year-olds don’t hit .326, and they certainly don’t lead the league in hits. The New York Yankees‘ ageless shortstop is doing both at the moment.

Jeter already has more hits this season than he had in all of 2011, a year in which he finally crossed the 3,000-hit plateau. That now feels like ancient history, as Jeter is sitting on 3,255 career hits and is quickly moving up the rankings on the list of players with the most hits in baseball history.

The man at the top is watching Jeter’s ascent very closely.

Rose, whose 4,256 career hits still top the charts, told The New York Times recently that he never misses a chance to watch Jeter.

“I’ll watch him tonight,” he said. “I watch him every night.”

He should be. Jeter is only 1,001 hits away from tying Rose’s all-time mark, and what’s another 1,001 hits to a guy who already has well over 3,000 and is hitting .326 at the age of 38?

That’s the million-dollar question. While Rose is certainly within sight from where Jeter is standing, it’s very much debatable whether he is in reach.

And you know what that means. 

Yup, it’s time for an immediate discussion. 

If All Goes Well This Season…

If ESPN.com is to be believed, Jeter is on pace to finish this season with 222 hits.

That, for the record, would be a new career high. The most hits Jeter has ever recorded in a season was 219 back in 1999.

So is 222 hits too good to be true?

Yeah, probably.

ESPN.com’s projection assumes two things. One is that Jeter will maintain his .326 batting average through the end of the season. The other is that he’ll finish the season with 681 at-bats.

It’s not hard to imagine him finishing the season with a .326 average, but the 681 ABs are problematic because that would be nearly 20 more ABs than Jeter’s career high of 663 in a single season back in 2010. 

According to Baseball-Reference.com, Jeter’s 162-game average for ABs is 661. That’s a more reasonable expectation for this season than 681.

If he does finish the season hitting .326, that means we can expect him to finish the season with roughly 215 hits.

The tricky part is that Jeter is much hotter now than he was in the first half of the season. He’s hitting .366 in the second half after hitting a mere (tongue firmly in cheek) .308 before the All-Star break.

Let’s assume he stays on this pace and that he ends up logging 282 ABs in the second half (the average amount of ABs he logged in the second half of the season between 2009 and 2011). If so, he’ll finish with 103 hits in the second half.

Add those to his 111 hits in the first half, and you get 214 total hits.

So once again, roughly 215 hits comes off as a reasonable expectation for this season. It’s not 222, mind you, but 215 hits would still be a single-season record for a 38-year-old hitter.

If Jeter does end up with 215 hits this season, he’ll be sitting on 3,303 career hits heading into 2013, 953 hits away from Rose.

So That Means…

There’s no question that Jeter has a legit shot at finishing the season with 215 hits. The dilemma, as it pertains to his pursuit of Rose, is that he’s finished with 215 hits only once before this season. It’s not something Jeter has a habit of doing.

Combine the rarity of a 215-hit season for Jeter with the fact that he’s getting up there in age, and it’s highly unlikely that he’ll be able to gather 215 hits in a single season again after 2012.

And that’s a problem because he could string together four straight 215-hit seasons after this year and he would still be short of Rose’s hit record by 93 hits.

This doesn’t mean Jeter can’t catch Rose, mind you. It just means that he’s not going to be able to do so quickly. Jeter’s pursuit of Rose is likely to be a long, drawn-out affair if he decides to see it through to the end.

Jeter may have one more 200-hit season in him after this year. Maybe two if he’s really lucky and he continues to keep himself in impeccable physical shape. 

Even still, two more 200-hit seasons would only put him at 3,703 hits for his career, over 550 away from Rose.

Jeter will turn 40 in 2014. He’ll know by then that it’s going to take a few more seasons’ worth of everyday playing time in order to catch Rose, and he could very well decide that the pursuit just isn’t worth it.

Complicating matters is the fact that the choice to pursue Rose isn’t entirely Jeter’s.

Will the Yankees Invest in Jeter’s Pursuit of Rose?

Jeter has been a Yankee his whole career, but at this point in time, the Yankees are not committed to him for the long haul.

Jeter has one more guaranteed year left on his contract, one that will pay him $17 million in 2013. He then has an $8 million player option for 2014 that could increase to $17 million based on various incentives.

He’ll probably choose to exercise that option, and the Yankees probably won’t try to talk him out of it. 

Once 2014 is over, however, it’s far from a given that the Yankees will look to bring Jeter back.

It surely would have been a given if George Steinbrenner was still running the show, but Hal Steinbrenner is more practical than his old man ever was. He’s looking to lower payroll in the future, and the rich long-term contracts of Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia and Alex Rodriguez are going to force the Yankees into hunting for bargain players like they never have before.

Keep in mind that payroll space will be even tighter if the Yankees choose to sign Curtis Granderson and/or Robinson Cano to extensions, bridges that the Yankees are going to have to cross (or not cross) in the very near future.

Jeter is still a very good hitter. The issue is that he’s lacking in terms of overall value, and thus not much of a bargain player.

According to FanGraphs, there are five shortstops across MLB with higher WARs than Jeter at the moment. This is thanks largely to his sagging defense, which takes away from the value of his offensive contributions.

His defense is not going to get any better. And indeed, it’s perfectly fair to argue that his bat isn’t going to get any better despite all this talk of potential 200-hit seasons at the ages of 39 and 40.

When the 2014 offseason rolls around, the Yankees could very well finally part ways with Jeter, leaving him to continue his pursuit of Rose with another team.

Here’s another million-dollar question: Would he be willing to keep playing on another team for the sole purpose of chasing Rose?

Rose hinted that he doesn’t think Jeter will be up for something like that, saying of Jeter: “He’s not the kind of guy who’s going to play for another team.”

He has a point. Jeter has only known winning his whole career, and the Yankees have always done everything in their power to keep him happy (e.g. not moving him from shortstop a long time ago, as they should have). Needless to say, he’s had it pretty good during his career.

If Jeter were to leave the Yankees and join another team following the 2014 season, he’d have to resign himself to the fact that things would be very, very different. The chance to pursue championships may not be there, his new team could play him at a position other than his beloved shortstop, and it could also bat him lower in the order.

If it comes to this, Jeter would then have to resign himself to the fact that he’d still be playing to satisfy his vanity and little else.

He’s better than that.

Or at least, that’s what we’ve been led to believe over the last 18 years.

The Grand Conclusion

Could Jeter eventually catch Rose and become MLB’s all-time hits king?

Sure he could. This is baseball. Anything can happen.

But will he?

No. 

Even if Jeter does finish this season with 215 hits to bring his total for his career to 3,303, he’ll still be well off Rose’s pace. He was 38 in 1979, a year in which he finished with 207 hits to push his career total to 3,372. 

He then went on to play seven more seasons in the major leagues after that, collecting 884 hits while hitting .274. Right now, Jeter is only locked up for two more seasons, and whether or not he’ll continue his career beyond these two seasons is the great unknown.

Even if he does, he’ll still have a long way to go to catch Rose. The only way he’s going to quicken the process is by playing every day and continuing to hit over .300.

Players over the age of 40 don’t tend to do such things. 

Jeter could finish his career in the Top Five on MLB’s all-time hit list, maybe even within the Top Three if he’s lucky.

But No. 1? 

Nah.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

When it first counted, it did seem a decent idea.

Major League Baseball had a terrible way to award home-field advantage for the World Series. MLB simply alternated home-field advantage between the National League and American League every year. 

The NFL is again the leader of the sporting leagues with their neutral-site Super Bowl showcasing one American city a year. The NBA and the NHL play in a playoff-series format, just like the MLBs, so neutral sites would not work over seven games. In the NBA and NHL, the team with the better regular season record gets the home-site advantage.

That is what Major League Baseball needs to do: make World Series home-field advantage about regular-season records. You guys play 162 of them; shouldn’t those count for something?

It is always about ulterior motives, and the national pastime, under the reign of Bud Selig, has become riddled with hidden agendas. Fox wants to have the ratings the MLB All-Star Game had back in the day of only three channels. Each of the big channels hates the advent of cable, satellite and the Internet because they have all helped their ratings plunge when compared to previous eras.

Selig can never catch a break, either. The team he owns—er—used to own, the Milwaukee Brewers, were the host ballpark for the 2002 All-Star extravaganza . The game was competitive, and after twelve tied innings, with all of the pitchers exhausted, Selig called the game a tie.

It was not well received.

Panic usually causes the worst decisions. Fox panicked about the ratings, Bud panicked about the TV deal, and, suddenly, the All-Star Game’s winning league had home-field advantage in the World Series.

Some things seem so obvious that only hidden agendas could keep them from coming to reality. College football’s playoff system used to be the most glaring, but even that sport’s glacial movement toward modern times has increased.

The MLB All-Star Game will never have the passion of Pete Rose obliterating Ray Fosse. We will never see a Cal Ripken play all fourteen innings of a mid-summer classic. In trying to rekindle that passion, a horrible choice has been made to make the All-Star Game count for something. 

In retrospect, this is a minor issue for 28 teams, but I bet you that the Texas Rangers would have liked home-field advantage last year.

They earned it in my mind since they had a better record than the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals were a Wild Card team as well, and they still were able to host four World Series games over the division champion Rangers.

The MLB All-Star Game should just go back to being a fun exhibition game. Making it count for something has not been a good idea. Regular-season records should determine home-field advantage.

Every regular-season game has the chance of something special happening, and those games should be the reason that one team hosts Game 1 of the World Series.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com