It’s easy to see from Rose’s past and present actions why Manfred shows little sympathy toward him in the report on the decision to uphold the ban. “If I kick the bucket, my son can make the speech (at the Hall of Fame) in Cooperstown”.
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So there goes the theory that it’s OK for Rose to be elected to the Hall since he would be inducted as a player who was clean and not a manager who was dirty.
Actually, he was sitting so close to a Las Vegas street, one could hear motorcycles in the background as Rose held court Tuesday outside the Pete Rose Sports Bar & Grill on the Strip. In 2004, Rose admitted in his autobiography, “My Prison Without Bars”, that he did bet on baseball while managing the Cincinnati Reds. He still bets on sports – and still bets on baseball.
“There was a time in my life when I was out of control – gambling”, said Rose. He’s also been quite brazen in flaunting his Las Vegas lifestyle, maintaining a constant presence at autograph signings and paid appearances in casinos.
A University of Kansas researcher has discovered what is believed to be the only audio recording of basketball inventor James Naismith, during which he describes the first game he organized 124 years ago this month as a bit of a disaster. I often thought about driving to San Francisco to catch a Reds-Giants four-game series but never did it. That was dumb.
Unfortunately for Rose, it doesn’t seem like his 26-year ban from the sport is going to end anytime soon. Manfred took over as baseball’s commissioner in January. “You have to live with it”, said Rose with his attorneys at his side. “Some of his questions, though, I kind of panicked”. From the time I was 9 years old, and well into my teenage years, I rooted for him as I never rooted for anybody before or since. “All you can do if you make mistakes, is try to learn from your mistakes”. How could you not love this guy who dove headfirst into bases, ran as hard as he could to first base even on a walk, and he played the game with such passion? He finished his playing career in 1986 with a major league-record 4,256 hits and managed the Reds until 1989.
Rose spoke on an outdoor patio fronting the Strip, where a crowd of a few hundred onlookers gathered behind the television cameras to watch the spectacle. Rose, though, continued to claim that he bet on baseball only in 1987 even though the Bertolini notebook and the Dowd report cast that claim in serious doubt.
“Pathetic charlatan that he is, Pete Rose needs no sympathy from anyone after baseball commissioner Rob Manfred yesterday slammed shut the reinstatement window in his face”.
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Rose was joined by one of his sons and flanked by two attorneys, one of whom argued that Rose should be allowed on the Hall ballot. Manfred said he feared Rose again breaking Rule 21, which prohibits gambling on the sport, a rule that’s posted in every major-league clubhouse, baseball’s biggest no-no that draws the line in the sand of integrity.
