The Josh Innes Show - Pete Rose Is Back In Baseball..Facebook Rejoices

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Well, MLB has reinstated Pete Rose. Why? I don't know. Many are celebrating this moment. Most of those people are on Facebook. Pete Rose has always come across as a slimy weasel and his fanbase always felt out of touch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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for white dudes of a certain generation. White dudes who grew up watching scrappy 1970s and 80s baseball. White dudes who tell you how terrible the world is today no matter what the topic. It was all better back in the 1970s. Dudes who really love classic rock but think classic rock ends in like 1984 and hate everything else. You know the dudes I'm talking about. Those dudes are Pete Rose fans and those guys are having a moment because yesterday Major League Baseball said you know what you are no longer banned. Why now? I have no idea. Maybe

it's because Trump was like hey we've got to we've got to get Pete Rose, Pete Rose, the great Pete. Is he Pistol Pete? That's Pistol Pete Rose. He's a great guy, played for the Cincinnati Jazz. Great guy and amazing, an amazing guy. He's amazing. But Pete Rose is now eligible for the Hall of Fame, which means the old people that are going to vote for him are going to vote for him to get into the Hall of Fame. And then Pete Rose will finally be in the Hall of Fame. And then all of you lazy, lousy, doofus sports radio people can finally shut the fuck up about Pete Rose. For the love of Christ, the worst sports radio topic in the history of sports radio topics will always

be Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame. And it will always be the people on the radio blowing the guy like, Oh my God, the guy slid head first. Yeah, he slid head first into a fucking 15 year old, none of you fucking care. Let's play some commercials and we'll continue. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?

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Venn diagram and you took like one circle of the Venn diagram. Is like Pete Rose stands like people that will live and die. They'll cut for Pete Rose and then another circle where you do the overlap in the Venn diagram and it's like people that fall for onion stories on Facebook, if you took those two right there in the middle of that Venn diagram, they're the same fucking people. Like, it's like my dad doesn't follow sports at all, but for whatever reason, he even gets a hard on for the Pete Rose stuff. And it's like the dude was seemingly a shithead. And

that's not a reason to keep someone out of the Hall of Fame. There are plenty of shitheads who are in various Hall of Fames. Obviously, that's not like a prerequisite. Like, hey, be a good human to get into the Hall of Fame, right? Obviously. But the guy is seemingly a lying shithead who did the ultimate thing you cannot do on sports, which is bet on sports that he was playing in and managing, and also fucked a 15-year-old, but in his defense it was legal to fuck a 15-year-old back then, according to him. Like if this guy were anyone else, these people would hate this dude, but this guy's got some sort of like magnet and steel thing with like 60-something-year-old sports media white dudes and people on Facebook,

people whose wives have been scammed by like some guy in the message, like by a guy claiming to be Keanu Reeves in her Facebook messages, people who are like, oh my god my wife's been kidnapped and the cops say the only way they can get him back is if I buy him $10,000 of Home Depot gift cards or she's gonna die. Those are the people that give a shit about Pete Rose being in the Hall of Fame. Like real talk, they're MAGA people and I have nothing against MAGA people as you know. I don't give a shit.

But like you can point something out and say okay those people are the same camp as those people, right? And like you would circle that and go okay MAGA people are definitely Pete Rose people especially after Trump is out there saying Pete Rose, I've pardoned Pete Rose for what we don't know somehow the president comes out pardons Pete Rose and for what doesn't say does he pardon him for fucking a 15 year old I don't know does he pardon him for just being a douchebag for lying for like 30 some odd years about whether or not he bet on baseball? Is that what you pardoned him for? I have no fucking clue. But like the Pete Rose audience is MAGA people.

Old middle-aged boomers. As we discussed last week, I'm all for boomers, particularly in the housing market. Go school all those Millennials on the housing market and make them fucking, you know, pay their dues for shitting on you for so long. So good on you. I'm not an anti-boomer. I want to be very clear. I'm very envious of many of the boomers and I'm certainly not an anti-boomer. However, in this instance, the people who are like,

go to social media and just type in like, Pete Rose Hall of Fame, whatever, and look at the number of people who are commenting on Pete Rose and just look at the racial breakdown of them and the people that are just hardcore like this is the greatest day ever and I can't believe they kept Pete out and Pete played the game the way it should have been. Did y'all know he slid head first? Did you guys know that? And it's all gonna be like middle-aged white doofs and they're all to like sing about how great things used to be because Pete Rose and how he got done dirty. It's going to be a lot of people who truly don't understand the ramifications of gambling on a sport and how betting impacts a sport.

Like, and I think to a degree baseball just looks pathetic. On one hand, I'm laughing because they waited till the guy was dead to do this, which I find kind of amusing. Like again, I am very anti Pete Rose. I'm anti Pete Rose fans. I'm anti Pete Rose. I find the guy to be loathsome and that all started for me in the early 2000s when I was a young kid. I used to be kind of into this story a lot and I was very pro Pete Rose. Like why the fuck is this guy not in the Hall of Fame? Who cares? He only

bet on his own team, blah, blah, blah. And by the way and I was very pro Pete Rose. Like, why the fuck is this guy not in the Hall of Fame? Who cares? He only bet on his own team, blah, blah, blah. And by the way, I was also in the camp of he never even did it. That's really where it turned for me. Where it turned for me is like for years and years the guy lied about it said I didn't bet on baseball. Then to sell a book, Pete Rose comes out and let you know that he did bet on baseball. And I want to say that book was called My Prison Without Bars, which seems to be a little bit

of an exaggeration, like, oh, tough shit, you're not in the baseball Hall of Fame, you go to a card show, you sign a bunch of baseballs, you're fine, you'll fucking live. But I think the book was called My Prison Without Bars was a red book, white lettering on the front. And I read this. And I'm like, boy, this poor guy, then I read another person's book about Pete Rose. And I'm like, fuck, this guy's a total cunt. person's book about Pete Rose and I'm like, fuck, this guy's a total cunt. What a horrible human. I hate this fucking guy. And then

as I got older, I just started to like him less and less because he always came across as a slimeball, as just this kind of weasely guy, guy that lied for 15 years about betting on baseball. Then it's like, nope, I just lied. I lied. I actually did bet on baseball. And I just as I grew into despising him. Then as I got into sports media, and I realized that was the lazy, low hanging topic for people, it made me even more disgusted with Pete Rose. And then I see the people that always go to

bat for him. The same people who are like big time hardcore Pete Rose people are the same people who are on Facebook letting you know that all of Hollywood is pedophiles like Tom Hanks is fucking children like that's those people like constantly like there's no reason that we think any of these people are you know fucking kids except that they're Hollywood elites and they're not MAGA therefore they're fucking kids therefore like that's what we get the whole time we get like oh let me tell you that the user pedophile is Dustin Hoffman pedophile and then like you'll you'll type that out on Facebook and people are

going to like it. Then you'll share an onion story that people will believe. Then the lead singer at Def Leppard is in your wife's DMs. These are all the same people. There is no difference in these people that they are interwoven together. Venn diagram, Pete Rose people, MAGA Facebook people who believe that they're having an online conversation with a King of Jordan. Those people are the same fucking people. And they are the same

people who if we're being fair, just being fair in this and I am not one sided in the political thing. Most people listen to this and think this guy is hardcore MAGA guy in this instant. These are the people who if Pete Rose were a black dude, they would not give two fucks and they'd be like, well, you shouldn't have broke the rules cunt like that's what these people would be like for whatever reason like there is this power that Pete Rose has over middle-aged

like 50 65 yearold white men. Like he just has this spell. There's a spell he has over like the Fox News, everything else is fake news. Like I'm no longer watching the NFL because they take a knee crowd. Like he has a certain spell over those people. I can't explain it. I can't think of another

person who's got that ability. I mean, it's a rare situation where like there's a guy who has a like a cause that he's fighting for for himself, which is to be reinstated into baseball and get to the Hall of Fame. There are other people that you know, white people of a certain age are in love with most notably Donald Trump, right? But like there are a lot of these people that are like that but nobody that's got a cause a perceived cause right and this guy has a perceived cause and the cause is I've been unfairly thrown into this and and I think I should be back in baseball I should be in the Hall of Fame and blah blah blah then I also find it interesting that they just throw Shoeless Joe Jackson back in there too. Mind you, Shoeless Joe Jackson admitted that he was part of throwing the World Series. Now he also said that he never, you know, purposely failed or anything, but he took money. So the guy took money to be part of

throwing the World Series. I don't really understand the message you're trying to get across here for your baseball. You're like, listen like listen if you wait if we throw you out of baseball for betting on the game Just wait until you die or in the case of shoe just shoeless Joe Jackson wait until you've been dead for half a century And then we'll or maybe more than that I don't know when the guy died, but that was in the 1919 World Series. Let's assume the guy died in the 50s Maybe But let's just say that you know you bet on baseball and you bet on our sport which we call the ultimate sin right? That's something you're not allowed

to do. You cannot bet on baseball. That is rule number one. You bet on baseball you're out. But then once you die we'll make sure to reinstate you. Like I don't know why you did this for 30-something years and then today you're like you know what? No we're going to take it back. Now there is a part of me that is tickled by the fact that this weasel the slime ball this Pete Rose didn't get to experience this while he was alive and I know that sounds horrible and I sound like a son of a bitch and I'm fine with that. I enjoy that Pete Rose didn't get to

experience this like I was going back and forth with a guy. I know on Twitter and he was really appalled by the idea that I said that this is a good day for old white guys. It's like if I were if I were Pete Rose's family, I'd tell all these people to fuck off. I'd be like cool. Why don't you just tell Pete Rose to not bet on fucking

baseball like the shit that people get worked up over people doing like this is the same crowd of people that hate when a dude like bat flips or like stares down a pitcher, you know, or wears jewelry to the plate like these are the same people that are like, ah, that's terrible for the game. But let me tell you what's fine is betting on the fucking game. It's the same people. Venn diagram it. It's the same fucking people. It's the same fucking people who don't like baseball anymore because of guys like Juan Soto doing the bullshit he does in the box and whatever.

It's the same fucking people that love Pete Rose. Pete Rose somehow is like a symbol of something to these people of like a time when the world was writer and whiter and Pete Rose was the guy and he's a symbol of everything that was once good and blah blah blah blah blah. The guy bet on the fucking games. What I find fascinating is if you compare this to the Astros thing, right, and like the Astros stole signs, right, and the whole world was appalled, oh my god, they stole signs, but people don't seem to have a problem with Pete Rose betting on baseball. I'm gonna guess that

Pete Rose also stole signs because that's part of the game. Probably didn't do it electronically, but I'm guessing he stole signs because that was part of baseball. Bobby Thompson was stealing signs when he hit the Giants win the Penn at home run shot heard around the world. So people fucking steal signs, right? It's not some sort of shocking thing, but like the number of people who are like stealing signs. What are we doing here? The integrity of the game. Then some dudes betting on games he's managing

and we're like, I'm fine with that. I think it's cool. I think he's done the time. Like, bro, that, like, and again, I know I say this every time this comes up and hopefully this is the end of Pete Rose conversation forever. If there's anything good that comes out of this, now there's no more Pete Rose, well, actually just put his fucking ass in the stupid fucking Hall of Fame. Let's leave out Mark McGuire. Let's leave out all these guys because they shot a needle into their ass. Let's leave them

out. But the guy, you want to get me fucking going. Like you want to really piss me off. Let's talk about how all the guys that took steroids are fucking pariahs and we can't put them in the fucking Hall of Fame. Barry Bonds, best baseball player I've ever fucking seen. Mark McGuire, 500 what? 80 something career home runs or whatever his home run total. I know, five hundred what? Eighty-something career home runs or whatever his home run total. I know his was a little over five hundred. But five hundred career home runs. Sammy Sosa,

all these guys that hit all these fucking home runs and resurrected baseball. They're not worthy of being in your shitty hall of fame. However, some guy who bet on the fucking game is. Some guy who fucked with, you want to talk about fucking with the integrity of the game? You know what's fun? The pitchers were doing steroids too. The game was fairly fucking even in the 1990s. You'll put a guy who was doing blow and had cocaine bags in his pocket in the 80s in the Hall of Fame. But you won't put the dudes that because they took steroids, big fucking deal. They

took HGH, big fucking deal. But now we're gonna put a guy in more than likely that bet on the fucking game. Oh, but Josh only bet on his own teams. He was so competitive. He was such a competitive man and he would only bet on his own teams. You keep believing that then. As I say every time we talk about this, it is a lot easier to throw a game than it is to win a game. You can go out there as the manager and go, you know what, here's my lineup tonight and we're going to lose this game. I'm going to make this, I'm going to pull this guy early. I'm going to leave this guy in a little too long. It's a lot easier to lose a game on purpose than it is to win a game on purpose.

So if you want to believe that Pete Rose never bet against the Reds, you can keep believing that. I won't. Oh, but Josh, he's told us forever that he never did. He also told you that he never actually bet on fucking baseball and he lied about that too. He's a weasel. So enjoy your Pete Rose world. Enjoy this world of like, you know, celebrating on Facebook. Good God Almighty, Pete Rose is free at last. Have fun with that. But Pete Rose comes across as a liar and a scumbag and he always has and he is the hero of this,

like the old white dudes. And that's fine. Old white dudes deserve to have heroes too. It just turns out that this hero is a real piece of shit. All the guys in Hollywood are fucking kids. Yeah, so is Pete Rose. Bet you don't give a shit. But that's kind of the hypocrisy, like when you work in Classic Rock, you see it all the time. I'm appalled by all the shit you guys talk about.

Oh, but you'll listen to She Was Only 17 or Christine 16 and you don't have a problem with that? Fuck off. Anyway, more to come.