Pete Rose Betting on Baseball

The all time major league baseball hits leader Pete Rose made his way back into the news recently when he admitted in a Tuesday afternoon interview on the Dan Patrick show that he bet an estimated $2,000 per game when he managed the Cincinnati Reds from 1984-89. Rose, who accumulated 4,256 hits during his illustrious career, continuously denied betting on baseball during the late 1980’s even though evidence of the contrary grew. When he didn’t show up for a meeting with then commissioner Bart Giamatti in September 1989, he was given the ultimate penalty of being banned from major league baseball.  Rose, who won various on field awards such as the 1963 Rookie Of The Year and in 1973 National League Most Valuable Player, continued to preach that he did nothing wrong until finally in 2004, he came clean in a biography entitled My Prison Without Bars. In that book, Rose told a different story then the one last Tuesday on the radio. Charlie Hustle as he was known as in his playing days wrote in his book that he bet only $1,000 per baseball game on the Reds when he was managing, and up to 2,000 on football games.

“It was like $2,000 and that’s it,” Rose said in changing his story during the interview this week. “I just made it easy for the guys making the bets and just bet this much every game and that’s the way we did it.”

Even though, Rose changed his story once again in the amount he met, one thing that is pretty obvious is that he never cheated himself, fans or the game by giving less than one hundred percent on the field. Being the all time hits leader, it’s clear- cut that Rose’s ability should land him in the Hall Of Fame. I don’t know Rose personally but what I’ve read and seen of him on television, he is not always honest, but the one thing that can’t be argued is he has tremendous respect for the game. At times deemed a showboat for his all out efforts, Rose once said that he doesn’t want to disappoint the fans by not giving them their money’s worth and that he wouldn’t want to let any kids down who are attending their first game. Throughout sports there are various athletes and builders enshrined in their respective sports hall of fame, who have made mistakes off the placing field. Ty Cobb who Rose passed on the hit’s list, was known as a racist and even came close to pistol whipping someone to death. In the sport of hockey, former Toronto Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard was elected in the Hall despite spending time in jail for fraud. Both these crimes are more serious for Rose who said that he’s been living in a private hell since being banned in ’89 from any type of major league baseball activity. Even though he gave a different amount of what he bet per game in his radio interview, I believe it is time to enshrine Rose for what he did on the field.

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