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Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Does Pete Rose deserve to be in the Hall of Fame? It's complicated
On the day that Pete Rose was banned from baseball in August 1989, Major League Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti did something that is impossible to imagine today. He stood in front of a horde of reporters at the New York Hilton in midtown Manhattan. He looked into a bank of television cameras beaming his news conference live into living rooms nationwide. He gave a short and poetic statement, announcing Rose's permanent banishment from the game and the reasons for it, and then Giamatti took the reporters' questions for about 45 minutes — on live television. In this moment, he didn't feel like a commissioner of a major American sport; he looked like himself — a former professor at Yale University, lecturing on a subject he loved: baseball. 'I will be told I am idealist,' Giamatti said that day. 'I hope so.' He thought it was important to find ideals in baseball — 'the national game,' he called it — and to protect these ideals at all costs. But he also believed in something else. Giamatti said that day in New York that Rose's name would appear on the ballot for baseball's Hall of Fame, as scheduled, in 1991 — five years after Rose's last at-bat as a player. Though Rose had bet on his own baseball games, risking the integrity of the game and violating its best-known rule, Hall of Fame voters would have a chance to cast a ballot for Rose. 'You have the authority,' Giamatti told the reporters that day, 'and you have the responsibility, and you will make your own individual judgments.' Frankly, Giamatti said, he was looking forward to seeing how the writers sorted through what he called 'the relationship of life to art — which you will all have to work out for yourselves.' Within days of the announcement, Giamatti died suddenly of a heart ailment. Two years later, the National Baseball Hall of Fame changed the rules, removing ineligible players, like Rose, from the pool of potential candidates. For the next 15 years, Rose continued to lie about what he had done, refusing to admit he had bet on baseball. Those lies hurt lots of people, including his family, his friends, his teammates, people in his hometown of Cincinnati, and the memory of Bart Giamatti. And in some ways, Rose never fully reckoned with his actions before his own sudden death last fall. Like a lot of addicts, Rose never fully got right with the world. But 36 years after Giamatti's news conference, Commissioner Rob Manfred will finally let at least a few Hall of Fame voters have that debate that Giamatti wanted. On Tuesday, Manfred ruled that a player's ineligibility ends at his death, thereby removing Rose, 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson and 15 other disgraced men from baseball purgatory. By rule, starting in 2028, Rose could now be voted into the Hall of Fame by a small committee that takes up the cases of players who competed long ago. It's a significant policy change for baseball and it threaded an impossible needle. In making his announcement, Manfred gave Rose's loved ones and maybe President Donald Trump what they wanted, without having to promise anything else. But Manfred's choice has also turned a long hypothetical debate into a real and raging one: Does Pete Rose deserve to be in the Hall of Fame? As usual with Rose, it's complicated. On the one hand, he compiled more hits in baseball history than anyone else — 4,256 — and he did so while playing the game in an iconic fashion. Fans loved how Rose sprinted to first base on a walk, slid headfirst into third, barreled into catchers trying to block home plate, and fought with shortstops out at second — anything to win. This approach earned him the nickname 'Charlie Hustle' and the name alone endeared him to us. He was the American dream, rounding third. So, of course, defenders say, Rose deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. But while we were cheering for him, Rose was making grave mistakes off the field. As I learned in the reporting for my book, he ran with gamblers and bookies. He cheated on his wives. He had an affair with a teenage girl in Cincinnati in the 1970s. He lied about all of it. And by at least 1986, he was betting on his own baseball games and incurring massive debts to bookies on the fringes of the mob. These debts, without question, put the game at risk and made Giamatti's fraught decision easy: Pete Rose — trapped inside his lies and his addictions — had to go. So, of course, critics say, he deserves nothing, except for what he got: his banishment. The people on that committee at the Hall of Fame now inherit this thorny debate, and as a baseball fan and a historian, I'll be interested to see what they do. But I also happen to think it's the wrong debate. We like to put our favorite athletes on pedestals and ascribe moral values to them. The truth is, we don't know much about them at all. And we'll know even less about our favorite players going forward, in a time the most famous athletes live inside gilded bubbles, protected from journalists and fans by legions of handlers. So maybe it's time we stopped pretending that every great baseball player also happens to be a moral person. Maybe it's OK to acknowledge that they were just talented at playing a little kid's game. And maybe we should consider enshrining their mistakes along with their accomplishments. We could put their shortcomings in bronze too — for perpetuity. Under this format, there'd be a lot of interesting plaques to read at Cooperstown. The Hall of Fame already includes a long list of miscreants: gamblers, alcoholics, drug users, adulterers, cheaters, spitballers, ball scuffers, liars, deadbeats, racists, and at least two hitters once accused of conspiring to throw games for money. They're all there. Not great. Just really good at baseball. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Yahoo
Luigi Mangione to be arraigned Friday on federal charges in UnitedHealthcare CEO's killing
Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City last December, is set to be arraigned on federal charges on Friday. Mangione was indicted last week by a federal grand jury in Manhattan on four charges, including stalking and murder through the use of a firearm — the latter of which carries a maximum sentence of death. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she intends to pursue the death penalty in the case. "Mangione's murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father of two young children — was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America," Bondi said in a statement earlier this month. "After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again." In late December, Mangione was indicted on 11 state charges in New York, including murder and terrorism. He pleaded not guilty. Mangione is also facing state charges in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested following a weeklong manhunt. The charges there include possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police. He was extradited to New York before entering a plea. He is being held without bond at Metropolitan Detention Center Brooklyn, where Sean "Diddy" Combs and other high-profile defendants are also awaiting trial. Mangione is accused of fatally shooting Thompson on Dec. 4 outside the New York Hilton, where UnitedHealthcare's parent company, UnitedHealth Group, was holding its annual Investor Conference. According to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, Mangione arrived in New York City by bus on Nov. 24 and checked into a hostel on the Upper West Side under the name "Mark Rosario," using a fake New Jersey ID. On the morning of Dec. 4, investigators say, Mangione left the hostel around 5:30 a.m. ET and traveled to midtown near the Hilton hotel. As Thompson was walking up to the hotel, Mangione took out a 9mm, 3D-printed ghost gun equipped with a 3D-printed suppressor and shot him once in the back and once in the leg. Mangione fled the scene on a bicycle, setting off a five-day, nationwide manhunt. He was arrested at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pa., on Dec. 9 with the same fake New Jersey identification and the 3D-printed ghost gun, as well as a handwritten document that police said appeared to be a 'manifesto.' Police said Mangione's fingerprints matched those collected by the NYPD on a water bottle and a KIND bar wrapper recovered near the scene of the shooting and on a cellphone found in an alley near the hotel. Authorities have yet to officially identify a motive in Thompson's slaying. According to the federal complaint unsealed in December, the FBI said that writings in the handwritten notebook Mangione had with him when he was arrested showed his "hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular." In one entry, Mangione wrote that "the target is insurance," according to the FBI. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny previously told reporters that there did not appear to be "any specific threats" mentioned in the manifesto, but "it does seem that he has some ill will toward corporate America.' Mangione was not a customer of UnitedHealthcare, but police said he had identified the company as one of the largest corporations in America in the document. 'So that's possibly why he targeted that company,' Kenny later said in an interview with NBC New York. Police also reportedly recovered shell casings at the scene with the words "deny," "defend" and "depose" written on them – echoing the title of a 2010 book, 'Delay, Deny, Defend,' that was highly critical of the insurance industry and describes a strategy of rejecting claims. According to the federal complaint unsealed, the FBI said that writings in the handwritten notebook Mangione had with him when he was arrested showed his "hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular." The killing sparked a national conversation about the U.S. health care system — with people sharing stories about denied insurance claims — and made Mangione a hero in the eyes of some who share his apparent outrage over corporate greed. At a procedural court hearing in lower Manhattan in February, dozens of people wearing 'Free Luigi' shirts and carrying homemade signs braved frigid temperatures for hours to show their support for Mangione. 'I don't condone murder, but what he did and its focus on UnitedHealthcare has really brought to life how our health care system is broken,' Shane Solger, one of the demonstrators outside the hearing, told Yahoo News. 'I'm here because the way that our health care system is designed right now hurts people. This is kind of a protest of our health care system.' Mangione was born on May 6, 1998 in Towson, Md., and raised by a prominent Maryland family. His grandfather was a real estate developer who owned country clubs in Maryland. And he is the cousin of Maryland Republican State Delegate Nino Mangione. He graduated in 2016 as a valedictorian from Gilman School, a private all-boys school in Baltimore. Mangione then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 2020 with a dual bachelor's degree in computer engineering (BSE) and a master's degree in computer and information science (MSE). Mangione's last known address was in Honolulu. Some of the people who knew him in Hawaii said he told them he had been suffering from back pain following spinal surgery. According to friends and family, Mangione stopped communicating with them about six months before Thompson's killing. Thompson worked for UnitedHealthcare, the nation's largest private health insurer, for 20 years. Thompson was named CEO in April 2021, after having previously served as the CEO of UnitedHealthcare's government programs, including Medicare & Retirement, according to his company profile. He joined the company in 2004. Before that, Thompson was a practicing CPA at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, serving as a manager in the transaction advisory services group of the company's audit practice, according to his LinkedIn profile. Thompson earned a bachelor's degree in Business Administration and Accounting from the University of Iowa. He graduated in 1997. He was a husband and father of two children. Thompson lived in Maple Grove, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis. His wife, Paulette Thompson, told NBC News that her husband told her he had been receiving threats. "There had been some threats," she said. "I don't know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him."
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Yahoo
Luigi Mangione to be arraigned Friday on federal charges in UnitedHealthcare CEO's killing
Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City last December, is set to be arraigned on federal charges on Friday. Mangione was indicted last week by a federal grand jury in Manhattan on four charges, including stalking and murder through the use of a firearm — the latter of which carries a maximum sentence of death. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she intends to pursue the death penalty in the case. "Mangione's murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father of two young children — was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America," Bondi said in a statement earlier this month. "After careful consideration, I have directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in this case as we carry out President Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again." In late December, Mangione was indicted on 11 state charges in New York, including murder and terrorism. He pleaded not guilty. Mangione is also facing state charges in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested following a weeklong manhunt. The charges there include possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police. He was extradited to New York before entering a plea. He is being held without bond at Metropolitan Detention Center Brooklyn, where Sean "Diddy" Combs and other high-profile defendants are also awaiting trial. Mangione is accused of fatally shooting Thompson on Dec. 4 outside the New York Hilton, where UnitedHealthcare's parent company, UnitedHealth Group, was holding its annual Investor Conference. According to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, Mangione arrived in New York City by bus on Nov. 24 and checked into a hostel on the Upper West Side under the name "Mark Rosario," using a fake New Jersey ID. On the morning of Dec. 4, investigators say, Mangione left the hostel around 5:30 a.m. ET and traveled to midtown near the Hilton hotel. As Thompson was walking up to the hotel, Mangione took out a 9mm, 3D-printed ghost gun equipped with a 3D-printed suppressor and shot him once in the back and once in the leg. Mangione fled the scene on a bicycle, setting off a five-day, nationwide manhunt. He was arrested at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pa., on Dec. 9 with the same fake New Jersey identification and the 3D-printed ghost gun, as well as a handwritten document that police said appeared to be a 'manifesto.' Police said Mangione's fingerprints matched those collected by the NYPD on a water bottle and a KIND bar wrapper recovered near the scene of the shooting and on a cellphone found in an alley near the hotel. Authorities have yet to officially identify a motive in Thompson's slaying. According to the federal complaint unsealed in December, the FBI said that writings in the handwritten notebook Mangione had with him when he was arrested showed his "hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular." In one entry, Mangione wrote that "the target is insurance," according to the FBI. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny previously told reporters that there did not appear to be "any specific threats" mentioned in the manifesto, but "it does seem that he has some ill will toward corporate America.' Mangione was not a customer of UnitedHealthcare, but police said he had identified the company as one of the largest corporations in America in the document. 'So that's possibly why he targeted that company,' Kenny later said in an interview with NBC New York. Police also reportedly recovered shell casings at the scene with the words "deny," "defend" and "depose" written on them – echoing the title of a 2010 book, 'Delay, Deny, Defend,' that was highly critical of the insurance industry and describes a strategy of rejecting claims. According to the federal complaint unsealed, the FBI said that writings in the handwritten notebook Mangione had with him when he was arrested showed his "hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular." The killing sparked a national conversation about the U.S. health care system — with people sharing stories about denied insurance claims — and made Mangione a hero in the eyes of some who share his apparent outrage over corporate greed. At a procedural court hearing in lower Manhattan in February, dozens of people wearing 'Free Luigi' shirts and carrying homemade signs braved frigid temperatures for hours to show their support for Mangione. 'I don't condone murder, but what he did and its focus on UnitedHealthcare has really brought to life how our health care system is broken,' Shane Solger, one of the demonstrators outside the hearing, told Yahoo News. 'I'm here because the way that our health care system is designed right now hurts people. This is kind of a protest of our health care system.' Mangione was born on May 6, 1998 in Towson, Md., and raised by a prominent Maryland family. His grandfather was a real estate developer who owned country clubs in Maryland. And he is the cousin of Maryland Republican State Delegate Nino Mangione. He graduated in 2016 as a valedictorian from Gilman School, a private all-boys school in Baltimore. Mangione then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 2020 with a dual bachelor's degree in computer engineering (BSE) and a master's degree in computer and information science (MSE). Mangione's last known address was in Honolulu. Some of the people who knew him in Hawaii said he told them he had been suffering from back pain following spinal surgery. According to friends and family, Mangione stopped communicating with them about six months before Thompson's killing. Thompson worked for UnitedHealthcare, the nation's largest private health insurer, for 20 years. Thompson was named CEO in April 2021, after having previously served as the CEO of UnitedHealthcare's government programs, including Medicare & Retirement, according to his company profile. He joined the company in 2004. Before that, Thompson was a practicing CPA at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, serving as a manager in the transaction advisory services group of the company's audit practice, according to his LinkedIn profile. Thompson earned a bachelor's degree in Business Administration and Accounting from the University of Iowa. He graduated in 1997. He was a husband and father of two children. Thompson lived in Maple Grove, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis. His wife, Paulette Thompson, told NBC News that her husband told her he had been receiving threats. "There had been some threats," she said. "I don't know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him."
New York Times
11-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Mangione Says U.S. Bid to Execute Him Is an Instagram Stunt
Lawyers for Luigi Mangione asked a federal court on Friday to bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty against him, arguing that Attorney General Pam Bondi's recently announced decision to do so was 'explicitly and unapologetically political.' Mr. Mangione, 26, has been charged with the Dec. 4 fatal shooting of a health care executive, Brian Thompson, 50, as he was walking to an early morning conference at the New York Hilton Midtown. On April 1, Ms. Bondi announced in a news release that she had directed federal prosecutors to seek capital punishment in the case 'as we carry out President Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.' Mr. Mangione's lawyers argued that Ms. Bondi's real motive in making the announcement was to garner press attention, noting that she talked about her decision in a Fox News Sunday interview and 'publicly released her order so she would have 'content' for her newly launched Instagram account.' They said she had also violated longstanding Justice Department protocols to ensure such decisions were made fairly. The lawyers also said a request they had made to the Trump Justice Department to allow them three months to investigate and prepare a thorough submission arguing against death penalty in the case was ignored. The lawyers had been able to make written and oral presentations to the government only in January, in the waning days of the Biden administration. 'These are not normal times,' Mr. Mangione's lawyers wrote. By directing prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York to seek the death penalty 'without affording even a modicum of process,' the lawyers said, Ms. Bondi was 'being consistent with the new culture of the highest levels of the Justice Department, one that values personal will over process, publicity over discretion and partisan politics over justice.' Mr. Mangione has not yet been indicted in federal court in Mr. Thompson's killing, but he is being held on a criminal complaint with four counts, including using a firearm to commit murder, which carries a maximum potential sentence of death. Mr. Mangione's lawyers, in their filing, also argued that Ms. Bondi's statements will 'prejudice the grand jury' that is asked to hear the case and return an indictment against him. A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the filing by Mr. Mangione's lawyers, and a Southern District spokesman declined to comment. This is a developing story and will be updated.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Yahoo
Attorney General Pam Bondi directs federal prosecutors to seek death penalty for Luigi Mangione
Attorney General Pamela Bondi on Tuesday directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City last year. Mangione, 26, was federally charged in December with stalking and murdering Thompson after the CEO was fatally shot on the streets of midtown Manhattan. He was also charged with first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism by state prosecutors. Bondi said that she was directing prosecutors to seek the death penalty as part of "President Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again." "Luigi Mangione's murder of Brian Thompson — an innocent man and father of two young children — was a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America," Bondi said in a statement. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all charges. His attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, called Bondi's directive "barbaric" and "political." "This is a corrupt web of government dysfunction and one-upmanship," she said in a Tuesday statement. "Luigi is caught in a high-stakes game of tug-of-war between state and federal prosecutors, except the trophy is a young man's life." Thompson's family could not be reached for comment about Bondi's directive. Mangione has yet to be indicted federally and prosecutors have indicated that both sides are ok with delaying that process while state prosecutors bring their case first. If he is convicted of the state charges, Mangione could be imprisoned for life without parole. Thompson's Dec. 4 killing and subsequent manhunt for his masked assassin captivated the nation. The gunman fled on a bike outside the New York Hilton Midtown, where Thompson was staying for the health care company's annual investors' meeting, police said. City surveillance footage showed the gunman riding into Central Park before disappearing. Five days later, on Dec. 9, a worker at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, said they recognized the gunman from images released by the New York Police Department and the FBI. Authorities arrested Mangione that day. Police said they found Mangione with a ghost gun, multiple fake IDs and a three-page handwritten document "that speaks to both his motivation and mindset." Police later said that the shells from the gun found on Mangione allegedly matched the shell casings found at the scene of the crime. Thompson's killing prompted a national debate over the astronomical costs associated with the U.S. health care system and insurance industry. Archived Reddit posts believed to be associated with an account that belonged to Mangione detailed that the 26-year-old underwent spinal surgery and struggled with chronic back pain, numbness, and restless sleep. At the time of the shooting, UnitedHealthcare said Mangione was not insured by the company. In her statement on Tuesday, Agnifilo also appeared to try and draw the wider debate over healthcare into Mangione's case. "While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the pre-meditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi," she said. "By doing this, they are defending the broken, immoral, and murderous healthcare industry that continues to terrorize the American people." Mangione is being held in a federal jail in Brooklyn, NY. This article was originally published on
