Does Pete Rose still threaten baseball's integrity?

At Neil Burtis Field in Hamilton, you'll see it. There's the hip-high right fielder who tossed dirt into the air, and hopped with joy as it blew into the face of a teammate. A coach, bent low at the waist, threw an arm around a player to whisper words of encouragement. The simultaneous leaping of eight players as the ninth caught the ball – on the fly!

In the middle of this exhibition of pure baseball sat two mothers, their children getting trounced on Ray Nichting Field, one of the larger of the five West Side Little League fields.

One noted how three players on the winning team had been held back from advancing to the next level of Little League so they "could get that one more superstar year."

"I don't blame them," she continued. She said she did the same thing with one of her children. "I'd want my kid to think they were better than they are."

It was time for me to leave. Just like that.

The idea of the game as it's "supposed to be," was broken in that conversation, regardless of its validity. At least for me, on that day.

That 84-degree day is just one, small example of what makes the discussion of such a nebulous phrase – "the integrity of the game" – even less tangible.

The game as we know it has lived through game fixing scandals, segregation, and now performance enhancing drugs. At nearly every turn, from an overly enthusiastic bat flip to a too-tight fastball to changing your fantasy starter just before first pitch to arguing for Joe Jackson and Pete Rose for the Hall of Fame, the "integrity of the game" is chopped, milled, sifted, rinsed – but it can never be finished.

It can't be.

Costas: Is it fair, authentic, real?

"In general, it's an ideal, the ideal that you can believe that the competition is on the up and up, that the competition is fair and authentic," said Bob Costas, the NBC sportscaster who has been broadcasting baseball for over three decades.

"I don't think it has to mean that every single ballplayer – this was never true and is never going to be true – that every single ballplayer is some all-American boy off the Wheaties box," Costas continued. "We prefer that they not find themselves on a police blotter, but as long as they respect the game and play the game fairly, that's good enough for me because the game itself is entertaining and interesting enough to me."

What integrity means, how it feels, is intensely personal. To the world, you are not right. Nor are you wrong. Especially in matters of sport, of baseball. This isn't a cop-out. It's not murder. Integrity is not morality.

What it is, is a childlike trust – an unspoken agreement – that what you're seeing is what you're getting.

Define it how you wish – the integrity of your game is assuredly different than your neighbor's, your mother's, your father's – but the one thread of connectivity between us all is a fundamental belief that what we are seeing on the field is real.

Over time, that belief has been shaken.

The 1919 World Series was a fraud as players profited by losing. Professional baseball before 1947 was second-rate as black athletes were unjustly excluded.

Where these issues fall on the line of integrity seem universal. They're wrong. So when did the line blur? Amphetamines were OK to use in the open. Heavy steroids were OK, too, but only in private. And then we found out what those substances did to alter what we thought was real. And what of a manager who gambled on his team? Is there room for equivocation there? Did the line move without a lot of us noticing?

Maybe it did. Using performance enhancing drugs is cheating by creating a playing field that is not level, but what led to Congressional hearings and a heaping dose of venom directed at those we know – and those we believe – used, was that we were duped. What we believed to be genuine was instead counterfeit.

Yet, that era is just another sloppy chapter in the game's living history, and some who wrote it should be inducted into the Hall of Fame. They existed. They played. If their numbers and team accomplishments count, so should they. But I understand the argument against them.

La Russa: The game is what matters

To Tony La Russa, who began his professional baseball career as a teenager in 1962 and ended it in the Hall of Fame as a manager, baseball's integrity is real because the game is real.

He doesn't gloss over or condone the use of PEDs, which enhanced several players he managed, but instead lumps it in with the other streaks that have, at one time or another, darkened the game.

For La Russa, baseball is Felix Hernandez vs. Mike Trout, just as it was Bob Gibson vs. Hank Aaron, and all that goes on after the ball is thrown.

"There have always been these periods where the game has been confronted and challenged and in the end what preserves it is you go back to the essence of one team against another team and who scores the most," La Russa said. "And the game keeps surviving."

Out on the fields in Hamilton, that thought is what echoes as well. Ryan Lindsey is 43, a Hamilton native who is currently coaching and umpiring in those youth baseball games. Integrity is about fair play, playing hard and honesty.

But then what of the dirt kicked up outside the diamond? What of fudging boundary lines and residences to play on a particular team, or altering a birth certificate, of gambling, of recreational and performance enhancing drugs? What of the near-billion dollar daily fantasy game DraftKings that Major League Baseball and Disney, the parent company of one of the game's primary broadcast partners (ESPN), have equity in?

To each his own.

Loving the game

I was disappointed to hear that conversation in Hamilton, but not surprised. I've covered amateur and professional sports for far too long. But it did violate that baseline trust, of walking onto a field of children, playing a game, and learning it wasn't quite what it seemed. Is that enough for me to swear off it all?

"Despite all of the inevitable flaws and controversies that will surround sports in one way or the other, because, after all, they involve human beings, what you have to believe is that the competition itself is basically fair," Costas said. "Will there always be gamesmanship, will there always be people looking for some kind of edge? Yes. But, I think most of us have a common sense understanding of where that line ends and where crossing it goes into something that jeopardizes the integrity of the game."

No matter what our lines of demarcations are, we do have them. Those we love, the games we love, are always allowed certain indiscretions until our hearts are irreparably scarred. But again, only you can define that line. And only you can determine the level of forgiveness once it's been blurred, or crossed.

Whatever your definition of integrity is, it comes back to that ribbon of reality that connects us all. The reason Major League Baseball, as a governing body, as a league of business partners and competitors, must protect that ribbon is because integrity has to be substantive. It cannot be a veneer. It can be scratched, chopped, milled, sifted and rinsed, but it can never disappear.

If it does, what of the game is actually left?

Costas: Rose HOF ban 'cruel and unusual'

Some things about Pete Rose's current situation are simple to understand. He was banned from baseball in 1989 for breaking rule 21, gambling as the manager of the Cincinnati Reds.

He was not banned from the Hall of Fame until 1991. The two were separate, until they weren't.

And for nearly a quarter century, that is what has fueled this debate over Rose's place in the game.

Sports broadcaster and baseball aficionado Bob Costas still sees it simply.

"This is very simple and I've said this forever: Baseball made a significant mistake by not separating the Hall of Fame from every other aspect of Pete's punishment," Costas said. "To the public, this is all about the Hall of Fame.

"The public is not confused about the idea that a participant gambling on the games, even if he never bets against his own team (is wrong). If you're gambling on the games you're potentially getting yourself into debt with unsavory characters. And/or the way you manage your own team could be affected by if you bet on your team – the way you manage your team to win it might be based on needing to win that one game in a way that doesn't fit properly into the goals of the season. You leave your starting pitcher in for 150 pitches. You use a relief pitcher for a sixth night in a row.

"You can't have any connection to gambling. It is a clear and unambiguous rule posted in every clubhouse that lifetime banishment was attached to that. Lifetime banishment. So, Pete is serving that sentence."

He continued: "But they didn't put in the ineligibility for the Hall of Fame clause. That wasn't in Bart Giamatti's decision. The Hall of Fame's board of directors decided that two years after Giamatti's decision. And the public says, I think rightly, I agree with them, temper justice with mercy and put him on the Hall of Fame ballot.

"If I saw his name on the Hall of Fame ballot and I were a voter – and I'm not because only writers are – if I were a voter, I would vote for him."

Not only should Rose be on the Hall of Fame ballot, Costas believes Rose should have been able to be honored by the Reds, in whatever capacity the organization saw fit, long ago.

And the fact there has been some consternation over what Rose can and can't be a part of during July's All-Star game irks Costas as well.

"First of all, I think it's silly and absurdly punitive to say that he can't (have a role)," Costas said. "They're letting him take part, I think, and he'll have a role in the All-Star game and they let him have a role in the All-Century team. I think ceremonial things – and the fact that FOX is paying him directly to be a baseball commentator I think – is a smart move. His point of view is interesting. He knows the game inside and out, and people want to hear from him. I think that's a smart move."

But the line that remains drawn, and should stand, is the banishment from the game for breaking rule 21.

"The idea that he can never be in the employ of baseball again, that he can never receive a dime from baseball, to be officially attached to baseball, makes sense," Costas said. "That's the penalty. That's the penalty. Other stuff just seems like cruel and unusual punishment to me."