This was a big topic Tuesday when Rose held a news conference in Las Vegas to address baseball commissioner Rob Manfred deciding against Rose’s petition for reinstatement.
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“While we may have failed at our task of presenting all of the facts to the commissioner demonstrating how Pete has grown and changed over the past three decades, Pete has meaningfully reconfigured his life”, Rose’s lawyers, Ray Genco and Mark Rosenbaum, said in a statement. But you can’t rewrite something that’s already happened.
Manfred said all year that he would have his staff conduct a review of all materials pertaining to the case, including the report issued by Washington attorney John M. Dowd that led to Rose’s ban. Rose’s representatives had submitted two reports to Manfred, one of which Manfred said he “gave little weight because the factual background recited in it is inconsistent with what Mr. Rose told me during our meeting”. I’m a recreational gambler now. “All I look forward to being some day is a friend of baseball, ” Rose said at a news conference fronting his restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip, his first comments since MLB commissioner Rob Manfred rejected Rose’s bid to get back into baseball.
Regardless of the intention, Reds long time scout and Wheelersburg native Gene Bennett realizes Rose most likely will never be allowed in the Hall of Fame with this decision. Especially when referencing his son and his grandchildren.
“There was a time in my life when I was out of control – gambling”, said Rose, 74. It’s not just baseball’s museum, it’s an extension of the game itself.
The man with the most hits in history will eventually be forgotten for producing 4,256 hits but forever remembered for committing baseball’s greatest sin.
Sucks that he won’t be getting a Hall of Fame induction ceremony, because wow, that’d be a complete shitshow.
“I’m in control of my life now”, Rose said. “Obviously, I’m disappointed. but I’ll continue to be the biggest baseball fan ever”. Manfred also said that Major League Baseball has additional evidence to prove the charges: a notebook of betting records from 1986 kept by Pete Rose’s associate Michael Bertolini.
Rose has applied for reinstatement twice before with other commissioners.
The ex-Red, Phillie and Expo has been banned from the sport since 1989, when the league concluded that Rose was guilty of betting on MLB games while serving as Cincinnati manager.
“I’m a good guy, to be honest with you”, he said.
Yes, commissioner, I do bet on baseball.
Pete Rose believes he still has a chance to one day get back in baseball, which has banned him.
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Manfred notes that during their September interview, Rose initially denied betting on baseball now and only later in the interview did he “clarify” his response to admit such betting. We are pleased that we have had and will continue to have opportunities to commemorate Pete’s remarkable on-field accomplishments. “It assumes that Pete Rose might have done something in 1989 that he’s totally incapable of doing, and that’s telling the truth and acting in baseball’s best interest instead of his own. It is after all the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Saints”.
