8902030658
DETROIT FREE PRESS
890825
Friday, August 25, 1989
METRO FINAL
1A
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1989, Detroit Free Press
ROSE: DENIAL, EGOISM AND THE LOOK OF A LIAR
He left the game still kidding himself, still believing he is somehow above
it, beyond the rules, too special to be caught. "I never bet on baseball,"
Pete Rose insisted again Thursday morning, the day he was banned for life
apparently for exactly that.
Thus ends the most excruciating sports story of the year. Not with a final
thud of justice, but with the whoosh of verbal swords. "He did it," says Bart
Giammati, the commissioner of baseball. "No I didn't," says Rose. "Good-bye,"
says the commissioner. "I'll be back," says Rose.
In the final tally, all the words don't matter. Rose, the former star
player and manager of the Cincinnati Reds, is out of the game, as of now, for
life -- the result of charges that he bet on games involving his own team. He
can apply for reinstatement in a year, but Giamatti is under no obligation to
take him back. Not next year. Not the year after. He can say "See ya, Pete"
from now until Seattle wins a World Series.
And this morning, we are left wondering if anyone is the better for this
mess. There is no joy in expelling Rose from the only place he seemed to live
an admirable life, the playing field. Yet there is no sympathy for a man who
thinks the world is a little white ball that will always spin him out of
trouble.
"Do you feel you'll be reinstated?" he was asked?
"Oh, absolutely," he said.
Amazing.
And sad.
Arrogance personified
And typical. For Rose has been, over the years, almost astonishing in his
arrogance. His celebrated 44-game hitting streak came while he was being
slapped with a paternity suit. His daughter, Fawn, once called him "the
worst father in the world," to which he responded: "I'm a great father. I just
gave her a Mercedes."
During a court hearing in late June on these same gambling charges,
Pete was far away, in Atlantic City, signing autographs for $15 a pop. And
Thursday night, his first night without baseball, Rose was appearing, believe
it or not, on one of those cable-TV home-shopping programs, chatting with
callers as if nothing had happened.
The all-time leading hitter? Three World Series rings? Baseball has
always been his cleansing rinse. And his only concern. On Tuesday, his wife
gave birth to a baby girl. On Thursday, Rose said: "I've never looked forward
so much to a birthday as I will to my daughter's birthday next year, because
it means two days later I can apply for reinstatement to baseball."
Even children, it seems, are no more than time markers for Rose's schedule
of getting what he wants.Guilty, guilty, guilty
We all knew this about Rose. We also knew he was guilty of something.
He confessed in the now-celebrated report by investigator John Dowd that he
bet on other sports, that he dealt with bookies. Technically, that was enough
to boil the water.
But the baseball thing. That he denied, over and over, despite the nine
witnesses, despite the slips with his fingerprints on them, despite the
handwriting analysis that said those slips, Reds games, were signed by him.
Rose said "nuh-uh," and went on with his job, managing the skidding team and
pretending, as he has done his whole life, that baseball would throw him a
rope.
His lawyers, however, were scrambling. In April, they called Giamatti's
office. They wanted a deal, one of those insulting verdicts where the guilty
party does a charitable act (i.e. gives money, talks to schoolkids) and all
is forgiven. The commissioner said forget it.
They came back, a few months later, willing to swallow expulsion in
exchange for a document that said Rose never bet on baseball. Giammati waved
his report full of evidence and said no way.
And so, in the end, the Rose army laid down its arms for a handful of
words, some verbal mumbo jumbo that Rose seems to interpret one way ("I'll
definitely be reinstated") and the rest of the world seems to interpret the
other. Yes, it's true the signed papers do not formally say Rose gambled on
baseball, but only because there was no hearing, no box score.
Make no mistake: Giamatti, the king of this court, said plain and simple
he believes Rose did gamble, on Reds games, as a player. How ironic that the
verbose Yale scholar has the cold hard facts, while Rose -- a man best suited
to physical force, sliding head first, breaking up a double play -- is reduced
to scrambling for words he can wave at people years from now. "Look. Nobody
found me officially guilty of nuthin'."
Who believes him anymore? He has the sound of a liar, the look of a liar,
he lets his lawyers step in front of him whenever the question gets tricky --
such as Thursday, when someone asked, with astonishing clarity: "If you didn't
do anything, why are you accepting this punishment?"
Rose looked at his attorneys.
They stepped to the microphone.
Now, whom do you believe?
A question of rules
OK. You might find the lifetime ban too harsh a sentence. What about
all the cocaine heads who are given countless chances to rehabilitate? What
about the alcoholics who surface over and over? What about the Steve Howes and
the Dwight Goodens and the Willie Wilsons? Why is Rose more guilty?
Well. It is not a question of guilt. It is a question of rules.
Historically, baseball, for all its off-field trouble, has shuddered deepest
at gambling. The Black Sox scandal of 1919 nearly destroyed the game. As a
result, first Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis permanently banned the
eight players involved, and later wrote the very rule that Giamatti cited
Thursday. Anyone gambling on the sport shall be banished for one year. Anyone
gambling on his own team shall be banished for life.
"I am simply citing the rules," Giamatti said more than once Thursday.
"This whole episode has been about whether or not you live by the rules."
You do. Rose included.
Thus the man who Mickey Mantle dubbed "Charlie Hustle," who used to count
the days until spring training, who used to tell people he was born in 1941,
"the year of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak" -- will have new numbers
to count. And a far more difficult task ahead of him. The burden is now on
Rose to prove to baseball he is a reformed man, and that could take forever.
The ink was not dry on the papers before he took the first step in the wrong
direction.
"Do you have a gambling problem?" he was asked. "And will you seek help
for it?"
"I don't have a gambling problem," he said. "And consequently, I don't
plan on seeking help."
Does that sound like a man who wants to rehabilitate?
Continued profit
And, quite frankly, he doesn't have to. Even if he never gets back in the
game, Rose can continue to profit from it. There's Japan. There's the
trade-show, talk-show, lecture circuit.
And then there's his side of the story, the inevitable book, and you can
figure a million-dollar advance for that baby. Considering he was making just
$500,000 a year as an active manager, that's not a bad wage for purgatory.
He will suffer, but he'll get by. The word out of Cincinnati is that,
before Rose would accept this settlement, he had to be assured he would
receive his 1990 salary. This was just a few days ago. Even to the end, he was
weighing the risk and the payback. He liked the odds. He took the deal.
In months to come, when the anger subsides, there may be sympathy, and
homage paid to the marvelous energy with which Rose attacked baseball: his
cloud-of-dust slides, his "I-dare- you" glares at a pitcher. "The way he
played the game," fans will sigh. But you know what? Any boy can play a game.
You have to be a man to face yourself.
Try swinging at that one, Pete.
PETE ROSE;BASEBALL;GAMBLING;COLUMN;SPT