Big day in sports today. American Pharoah, racing’s first Triple Crown winner in 37 years, was a solid winner of the Sports Illustrated fan poll for Sportsman of the Year but lost out in the end to tennis star Serena Williams.

I’ll admit I feel about tennis the way most serious tennis fans feel about horseracing, but I’d agree you could make a solid case for Serena as the winner. If you’ve ever subjected yourself to sports talk radio, hyper-arguments about even the most inconsequential topic are the meat and potatoes of the genre. It would be naive to believe the Serena v. AP argument wouldn’t occur on all the public media sites, or that the arguments wouldn’t occasionally degenerate into the absurd. One chucklehead suggested that if you favored AP over Serena you were a racist. Of course, there are a lot of horseracing people whose passions extend far beyond simple fandom. When Shared Belief, and even the young sire Scat Daddy, died, there were people who reacted like they had lost a family member.

The other thing that seems to be part of the sports discussion genre is that no one ever convinces anyone to change their minds. The discussion usually goes something like this.

A: I’m right

B: No, I’m right

A: You’re an idiot

B: No you’re an idiot

And then it’s like shampooing. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I have no idea how important the Sportsman of the Year award is to an athlete, but it means almost nothing to me. Do you get more endorsements? Your Q rating go up? Does it bring you new fans or shut up your critics?  If any of those are the case, then better that it goes to a human than a horse anyway. The fact is, Pharoah would have no clue one way or the other, and Baffert, Zayat and the rest of the team will hardly suffer for not getting another award. He’s going to win horse of the year, and frankly that will do as much for the AP team as the SI award might have. There’s hardly a good reason for the horseracing community to go all sports radio on Sports Illustrated, other than AP was technically the people’s choice and we love our champions just like fans of other sports do. But in a week we might not even remember who was SI SOY.

Anyone who believes AP getting the SI award would bring horseracing into the mainstream, I have two words for you. Women’s soccer. The World Cup championship game was the most watched soccer game in U.S. history. A few months later, you still don’t see women’s professional soccer anywhere on TV, radio, or the print media. It was an event, like the Kentucky Derby or the Breeder’s Cup. When it was over, it was back to watching what Americans know as football.

I believe if Serena had won the U.S. Open that may have settled the arguments. Jordan Speith in golf had a great year and dominated in a way not many have since Tiger Woods at the peak of his game. The Kansas City Royals were mentioned, but c’mon, doesn’t the award need to go to one sportsman? I guess that means the U.S. Women’s Soccer team gets a similar DQ from me. Stephen Curry could have easily been justified as a winner.

All in all these sorts of general awards are anachronistic and for the most part silly (sorry, but I’m including the Heisman and the ESPY’s in the silly category). How do you seriously compare a female tennis player to a horse to a male golfer to a soccer team?  And moreover, how do you get angry when your favorite doesn’t win? In the big scheme of things, this really isn’t worth much more than a sentence or two stating your position and then moving on. Unless you have a blog to write or something.

The other big news was that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred denied reinstatement to Pete Rose. I don’t know Rose beyond what I read, but I still have some sympathy for the guy. On statistics he could have been a unanimous first ballot addition to the Hall of Fame. But anyone who plays professional baseball should remember that tolerance for betting on baseball has been zero since Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (is there a more somber name in sports?) sent the Chicago Black Sox to the sidelines permanently, including another potential Hall of Famer, Shoeless Joe Jackson whose guilt is still argued. Rose, on the other hand, is guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. Some of the bookmakers he used have sworn that he bet on baseball and more than just his own team while he was still Cincinnati player-manager, something that elevates the sins to their most serious level.

I’m not suggesting Rose shouldn’t have been punished severely, but Rose didn’t get to be baseball’s leading hit-getter on anything but sheer talent and determination. Part of me says you have to recognize Rose for that achievement, because that achievement is baseball’s achievement as well. That doesn’t mean he has to be elected to the Hall, but it’s a farce for baseball to deny him recognition in the place where baseball recognizes it’s most worthy achievements. And  perhaps gambling is only worthy of a lifetime ban in cases where that gambling influenced the outcome of events that, ironically, other people gambled on. If you want to extend the arguments, any professional player who is in a fantasy league may be gambling just as much as Rose did, at least if you believe New York and Nevada. Lots of baseball players (and other athletes) are horse players – Paul LoDuca, a retired player, is even an analyst on TVG. So it isn’t the gambling itself that is the issue, it is the gambling on your own sport while you are an active player or manager (or taking bribes as in the case of the Black Sox) that is disqualifying. I think.

Rose has done a lot of things wrong since deciding to bet on baseball, most especially denying his guilt for years. Whether or not he has done whatever would be necessary to prove he has rehabilitated himself is subject to interpretation. Manfred certainly didn’t think so. Rose’s reinstatement is nothing that keeps me up at night, but it does bother me that we’re still going through the case again and again. Let’s face it. Charles Manson isn’t getting paroled no matter how many times he goes to the parole board, and no matter what he does to rehabilitate himself. It’s a farce that state law insists the parole board go through. But nobody worries when Charlie comes before the Board. On the other hand, there is no law that forces Manfred to reconsider Rose’s ban at some regular interval. I believe Manfred either has to make it clear that the book is closed on Rose, or he has to lay out specific conditions for how Rose gets back in baseball’s good graces. Rose and his lawyers rejected negotiating that kind of agreement previously, and if they do it again, Manfred should slam the book shut permanently. Let’s face it. Manfred holds all the cards and Rose is 74, meaning he doesn’t have much time to prove himself Hall worthy. For 26 years this story has regularly appeared on the sports pages, and enough is enough. Rose should either be in the Hall or he shouldn’t and Manfred has the power to decide that once and for all.