By JOE STRAUSS ADVERTISING By JOE STRAUSS Tribune News Service More than a quarter-century since playing and managing his final game, Peter Edward Rose represents the most polarizing figure connected to American professional sports. The competition, as they say in
By JOE STRAUSS
Tribune News Service
More than a quarter-century since playing and managing his final game, Peter Edward Rose represents the most polarizing figure connected to American professional sports.
The competition, as they say in one of Rose’s favorite pastimes, is way up the track.
Rose was a great baseball player, a poor manager and a compulsive gambler. The combination ultimately proved toxic to a man who otherwise would have strolled into Cooperstown with more than 95 percent of the vote. Instead, Rose agreed in 1989 to a lifetime banishment from the game when cornered by attorney John Dowd, author of the 225-page report that laid out the all-time hit leader’s sin of betting on baseball as manager of the Cincinnati Reds.
Passage of time hasn’t been kind to Rose.
After blasting Dowd’s investigation as nothing more than a set-up for more than a decade, Rose admitted to the report’s findings in 2004 when it could earn him a buck.
“Pete Rose: My Prison Without Bars” copped to what Rose previously insisted was a falsehood, that he violated baseball’s prohibition against betting on the sport. Of course, the admission was part of a campaign to gain reinstatement.
It was part of the hustle.
Rose maintained his innocence as a player. However, that claim recently was contradicted by an ESPN investigation that unearthed a bookmaker’s binder containing bets attributed to Rose while still grinding away his 4,256 hits, 2,165 runs and .303 career average.
If anything, Rose appears guiltier today than on Aug. 24, 1989, the day commissioner Bart Giamatti announced Rose’s banishment. He’s exchanged a lie for a prevarication, replaced a denial with a rationalization.
To Rose, betting baseball was a lesser offense than the game’s epidemic use of performance-enhancing drugs.
If Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire can receive consideration for the Hall, why shouldn’t he?
Rose, who could recite virtually any statistic as a player, knows the answer. It looked him in the eye every time he entered a clubhouse. Ever since the Black Sox scandal soiled the 1919 World Series, baseball’s greatest taboo has been betting on the game. Rose’s current wager is that the passage of time, short memories and moral relativism will allow his return through the game’s back door.
Bud Selig was barely out as commissioner before Rose applied for reinstatement with Selig’s successor, Rob Manfred. The two are to meet sometime after the All-Star break. Rose now works for rightsholder Fox Sports as an analyst, something that doesn’t pass the smell test. He’s scheduled to appear on field during next Tuesday’s All-Star Game in Cincinnati. Of course, Great American Ball Park sits on Pete Rose Way, a crooked street.
Most believe Manfred indulging Rose is a formality, that he won’t be reinstated or made eligible for the Hall.
But some will always fall for the hustle, seeing Rose as a victim, a 73-year-old candidate for rehabilitation, a sob story who maintains a residence in Las Vegas.
Reached Thursday at his Cape Cod residence, Dowd views it differently.
“In my opinion it would destroy the powerful force of Rule 21,” Dowd said.
According to Major League Baseball’s Rule 21(d): “Any player, umpire or club or league official or employee who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.”
If the Hall of Fame has room for Rose, it needs to make room for Joe Jackson and Eddie Cicotte. It needs to strike the so-called character clause and eliminate the vestiges of any impediment to PED cheats. By reinstating Rose, MLB would be saying a “lifetime” ban lasts only until an offender gets the right PR.
Rose could have nourished his gambling jones at nearby Turfway Park or River Downs, could have taken up poker or dice, could have bet basketball or football.
He could have wagered on just about anything and probably escaped censure if he hadn’t bet Reds baseball with bookies linked to the New York mob. At worst, Rose would have received a year’s suspension if he had just bet games not involving the Reds.
Rose, however, wanted more than action. He sought control over something he knew intimately. It unfortunately cost Rose control over his future.
Apologists might say Rose only bet on the Reds to win. But what did his refusal to wager on his team those other nights say?
Dowd is deaf to anything he hears from Rose or his acolytes. The hit king and his camp had no issue impugning Dowd, Giamatti and Giamatti’s successor, Fay Vincent, for more than a decade into his banishment. Bruises remain.
“It was suggested what we had done was not legal,” Dowd said Thursday. “I was accused of corruption and fabrication. I’m used to that because I was a criminal trial lawyer but it’s not pleasant having someone’s PR machine churn out that crap every day. He attacked Bart. He attacked Fay. He attacked everyone then turned around and admitted it when he thought it served his interests. That’s what criminals do. And Pete Rose is a criminal. He’s a hardened criminal.” (Yes, Rose served almost six months in 1990 for tax evasion.)
Dowd isn’t impressed that MLB is making Rose part of next Tuesday’s festivities. (“When you’re banned from the game, you’re banned from the game,” Dowd said.) But he believes it a far cry from reinstatement.
“I’m not concerned it’s going anywhere,” Dowd said. “I think it’s the right thing for the commissioner to do. [Rose] has the right to re-apply. Somebody makes an application, you listen to what he has to say, then make up your mind.”
The outcome of that conversation is self-evident to MLB’s former inquisitor.
“I’m not aware of any redemptive information that would or should move any commissioner to re-admit Pete Rose,” Dowd asserted. “To me, recent information reminds us all that he has a terrific problem with the truth.”
Dowd has no regrets about the investigation he led or its outcome. He remembers receiving a call of gratitude from Nolan Ryan on the day Giamatti announced Rose’s exile from the game. Dowd remembers Ryan thanking him “for the 2,000 players who follow Rule 21 every day.” Later, when he would travel through the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport Dowd insists he was thanked rather than heckled or berated.
“Some of them would offer me a beer and wanted to chat,” Dowd remembered a generation after the fact. “Everyone cared about what we discovered and that we did something about it. People do care about the damn game.”
His upcoming meeting with Manfred is Rose’s final headfirst slide. It may not get him to his desired destination any quicker, but he’s sure to arrive dirty.
