I agree that the financial incentives in the game today significantly reduces the probability that a major leaguer will throw games in the service of gamblers. And thank god for that. Even the lowest players on the major league rung are insanely well compensated relative to the average citizen of the world, and besides, hardly any players making the minimum, or even a few times the minimum, are in a position to have so much impact on a game that they can be relied upon to tank it for the gamblers.
I also agree that there are people who have that peculiar mental genetic disorder that predisposes them to continually put their livelihood and wealth at great risk by engaging in games of chance for money, regardless of the financial rewards that playing the game yields them. Those people need help, and hopefully they will get it.
Neither of these circumstances, I think, should lead to diminishing by one iota the force of the laws of the games governing the gambling on baseball games by players and others connected to the game; neither should the punishments proscribed for such infractions be diminished. Those should always be in force, actually for every professional sport.
As for the Hall of Fame, it's their choice to prevent people banned from Baseball from entering the Hall. Personally, I don't see how they could ever reconcile allowing Pete Rose into the Hall while he is actively banned by Baseball.
But if Baseball were to ever clear the way to the Hall for Pete Rose and exonerate him, or at least commute his ban, then two things:
- There will be a huge uproar from people who oppose Pete Rose's reinstatement: from the press, from many baseball fans, and most concerning of all, from Congress, the guardians of Baseball's legal monopoly status. And that uproar would be THE story of baseball, to the exclusion of all others, for years on end afterwards.
- Baseball would not only have to commute the ban on every other player who has ever been banned for gambling, but they will never be able to ban any other player for gambling without a significantly high percentage of people raising a huge hairy fuss over it, and also without that being THE story of baseball for years on end.
In both cases, the main thing that would happen is that Baseball would simply be jumping into a lake of fire of its own making, and anyone who thinks Baseball is willing to do that by unbanning Pete Rose doesn't really understand how Baseball, as a business dependent on the goodwill of multiple constituencies (Congress, the media and the fans), operates.
Right now, Baseball has the best situation going for it because the entire discussion of Pete Rose exists only on the periphery, mostly in online forums such as this, and occasionally in the call from a columnist here or there that they should lift the ban. And then that call is forgotten. But if Baseball were to ever follow through and unban him, then that would be THE #1 story of the game every day for years on end, and no way would they ever allow that if they could avoid it. Which, of course, they can.
TL;DR: There is nothing in it for Baseball to unban Pete Rose.