Nothing in Pete Rose's admission that he bet on baseball while managing the Reds should earn him reinstatement to the game. The hits king needs to do a lot more to fully rehabilitate himself. His "confession" in his new book My Prison Without Bars, due out Thursday, only validates the decision by Major League Baseball to ban Rose for life for breaking one of the game's fundamental rules.
Rose seems still in denial about his gambling problem and unable to take decisive "Charlie Hustle" action that could have won him the one thing he wants most - a reinstatement that would give him a second shot at managing in the big leagues and allow his name to go on the Hall of Fame ballot.
Rose ought to enter a rehab program and renounce all forms of gambling, but he has never done that. These last 14 years, he could have been a national example by seeking help against his gambling compulsion. Instead he continued gambling, and for 14 years lied and denied he bet on baseball and badmouthed those who investigated him. Now although he admits he's been lying, he is asking to be trusted to work as a manager again. On what grounds? Because he finally confessed in hopes of snagging a manager's job?
The rule against players or managers betting on baseball is indispensable to safeguard public confidence in the game. The consequences of violating that rule have been starkly clear ever since Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis banished eight players for betting on the game in the White ("Black") Sox scandal of 1919.
Advance reports on Rose's book say he admits to being a big-time gambler who started betting regularly on baseball in 1987. That puts his gambling after his playing days, which ended in 1986. John Dowd, the baseball lawyer who investigated Rose, disagreed. Dowd concluded Rose bet on baseball from 1985 to 1987. Dowd reported Rose's bets included 52 on Cincinnati to win. Rose agreed to a "lifetime" suspension in August 1989. In 1997, he applied for reinstatement. There is no evidence Rose ever bet on the Reds to lose, but that is immaterial. Given his admission and his refusal to acknowledge that he has no control over his gambling, there is no way he can be trusted to hold a position that could influence the outcome of a game.
The Associated Press quotes from Rose's new book in which he argues: "I should have had the opportunity to get help, but baseball had no fancy rehab for gamblers like they do for drug addicts. If I had admitted my guilt, it would have been the same as putting my head on the chopping block - lifetime ban. Death penalty .... Right or wrong, the punishment didn't fit the crime - so I denied the crime."
Those self-serving remarks make it clear that even now, he does not understand the corruptive threat to baseball from players or managers betting on games. Rose doesn't need baseball to go to rehab. He admits seeking a high from gambling that he could no longer get as a star player. But unlike many other compulsive gamblers, he had his golden autograph and lasting star power to keep him from hitting bottom and seeking help.
However muddled Pete Rose's case has become, eligibility for the Hall of Fame is a different issue from eligibility to manage a team. Two years after his banishment, baseball adopted a special rule to make sure Rose, who holds 32 records from his playing career, could not be inducted into the Hall of Fame. That's dubious, retroactive punishment. Rose was a great player on the field. His last chance to appear on the writers' ballot is December 2005. He belongs on that ballot. The traditional ticket to the Hall of Fame all along has been the vote by the baseball writers. The decision on whether Rose belongs in the Hall ought to be left up to the baseball writers.
His gambling will never erase what he did on the field. And putting him in the Hall will never erase the shame he brought on himself and the game he loved.
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