When I started, some years back, getting involved in youth baseball through a young fellow who's now moved on to high school and guitar and a multitude of other endeavors, one thing that struck me as constructive and kind of important was the way in which the kids were taught to play by the rules, to the letter. And how, at game's end, they marched onto the field to congratulate the other team, win or lose. And the way coaches and parents cheered for the triumphs of their opponents -- a good hit, an accomplished play in the field.

Sportsmanship, they called it. Character. Respect. Right and wrong.

Good stuff, and yes, it can be learned in a multitude of other ways, but for some of the kids, the baseball field really was the touchstone for values they'll likely carry on through life. Maybe that's naive, but it rings true.

Some of them were disappointed from time to time when their big league idols fell from grace through some personal failing -- an arrest, drugs, a big mouth. So you'd tell them: People aren't perfect, just because they happen to be almost-perfect playing ball. Another life's lesson, that disappointment was, illustrative of how even heroes have to be kept in perspective. And even they deserve a measure of forgiveness, particularly when we're the ones who built the pedestals in the first place.

Which brings us to Pete Rose, and the current brouhaha over the gambling habits of baseball's most prolific hitter, a fellow who was compared to the greatest of the greats, who enjoyed a level of adulation of which most can only dream. Rose, who attained stardom playing for the Cincinnati Reds and then became a manager, was booted from baseball 14 years ago for illegal gambling, but not specifically because he was alleged to have bet on baseball. Rose has denied that charge for all those years, but now, in a book being released today, comes clean and acknowledges that he did bet on baseball, and on his own team, but never against his team. He says he's sorry, and in an epilogue quoted by The New York Times, adds "Let's move on."

What he wants to move on to is the Baseball Hall of Fame, and perhaps even back into a manager's job. Now there's a lesson the kids thankfully didn't pick up those years ago on the sandy fields where I spent many an afternoon: lie to everybody for 14 years, criticize everybody else, and then sell the truth to people in a book. Now, how's about my plaque?

Bad lesson. Bad idea.

It may well be that people are a shade too reverential when they talk about the Hall of Fame. It's not a church; it's not Rushmore; it's not a monument to some world-changing religious or political figure; and no, it's not symbolic of a gathering of saints.

But once you've been there, and I've been there four times, it's hard not to feel a certain somber appreciation of the individuals represented by the plaques in the actual Hall. 'Tis said that Ted Williams' plaque has a shiny spot or two where people have simply touched it...that's all, just touched it. It's especially interesting to watch first-time, elderly visitors go through the place, and pause in front of the plaques that represent their childhood heroes of long ago, men long-since faded from memory, save for the Hall of Fame.

Did some of them gamble, smoke, drink, cuss and indulge in habits that were not exactly example-setting? Sure they did. But they came along at a time preceding television's current saturation, and preceding also the opportunity for athletes to trade on their fame with heaps of endorsements or merely by signing their names at autograph shows.

But what Pete Rose did, first in gambling on a sport in which he was a key figure, second in not telling the truth about it for 14 years, seems a pretty grave problem for someone who wants to occupy what, for baseball fans, is hallowed ground. Rose has made a gazillion dollars thanks to his baseball career; he presumably can continue to cash in on his name (The Times reported a million-dollar advance on his book.) But it's understandable why he's apparently in a hurry to get himself voted into the Hall of Fame by the baseball writers. After two more writers' votes, his fate would fall to a committee that includes all living members of the Hall of Fame, where some reports have it that admission would face opposition.

Pete Rose was a grown man in charge of his own behavior, fully aware of what he was doing, certainly cognizant of the fact that gambling was against the rules. He must have known as well that he was a hero on a thousand sandlots. Forgiven? Certainly. Invited to ascend another pedestal? Certainly not.

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