I love baseball.

Always have.

Since the 1961 Reds (Vada Pinson, Jim O’Toole, Frank Robinson, Jerry Lynch, Jim Brosnan), and Curt Gowdy/Tony Kubek on Saturday afternoon TV games, I have known the ambrosia of bat, ball, and glove.

Pete Rose was a god to me.

But there was only one “third rail” in the game and everyone knew what it was.

If you gamble on baseball, you cannot play professional baseball.

Worth repeating for clarity; if you gamble on baseball, you cannot play professional baseball.

It diminishes me, and baseball, and the planet, for Pete Rose to be excluded from baseball…but he broke the one clearest rule of the game.

Should it turn out that Mr. Ohtani has committed a similar offense……

If we cannot maintain an integrity in our games, I despair of maintaining it in the things that matter in our lives…such as government.

I resist and will persist in resisting that despair.