Sunday, August 22, 1999
Rose sticks to denials; Baseball sticks to its evidence
BY TIM SULLIVAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[giamatti]](http://reds.enquirer.com/img/photos/1999/08/082299giametti_160x158.jpg)
A. Bartlett Giamatti was convinced Pete Rose bet on basesball. Giamatti died eight days after banning Rose.
(Enquirer photo)
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Before John Dowd picked up the scent, the pursuit of Pete Rose was led by Kevin Hallinan. Baseball's security chief followed his leads with the hope they would lead nowhere. He did not want to believe Rose had bet on baseball. He would have preferred a wild goose chase to a trail of convincing clues.
“When I first got into it, prior to Dowd, there was the hope that it wasn't true, that this wasn't the case,” Hallinan said. “It quickly became apparent that he had in fact bet on baseball. It was the easiest case. Every place we went, we found it.”
Ten years since Rose agreed to a lifetime suspension while disputing the degree of his guilt, the evidence against him remains unrefuted.
Though Rose says he has “reconfigured” his life by eliminating illegal gambling and becoming more careful about his companions, he has been unable to change the perception that he's in denial about what he did. Rose served five months in prison for confessed tax crimes, but the issue at the crux of his baseball banishment has always been whether he bet on games.
Some of Dowd's evidence was circumstantial. Much of it was gathered from fellow gamblers en route to prison. But through extensive direct testimony, telephone and bank records, handwriting analysis and Rose's own credibility problems, Dowd built a case that convinced some of Rose's closest friends.
“I think I'm a pretty logical person,” said Marty Brennaman, the Reds radio announcer. “When I read the Dowd Report, there was no doubt in my mind. If Pete was going to bet, why not bet on what he knew best?”
Early attacks on the credibility of Rose's accusers, the conclusions of baseball's investigators and the alleged duplicity of Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti have produced no lawsuits, no retractions and no real momentum toward reinstatement.
Rose has steadfastly stuck with his story, but he has yet to challenge Baseball's version in any formal fashion. This despite the recommendations of some learned onlookers.
Sam Dash, formerly the chief counsel to the congressional committee that investigated Watergate, considered the case against Rose to be shockingly flimsy: “If John Dowd turned in a report like that to me,” he said. “I'd fire him.”
Baseball author Bill James predicted if Rose's lawyers ever took the case to court, they would “mop the floor” with baseball.
“I feel very strongly that Pete Rose got a raw deal from baseball,” James wrote in his 1994 book, The Politics Of Glory. “John Dowd's investigation of Rose's behavior, which claimed to be fair and impartial, was a mockery of those words. Dowd leapt to the conclusion that Rose was guilty, and twisted and bent the facts to support that conclusion ...
“Pete Rose was banned from baseball on the basis of rumor, hearsay, slander, gossip and irrelevant information which was fed to the public to make Rose look as bad as possible. Put it in a court of law, and 80 percent of it is going to boil off before the bailiff ever gets his seat warm.”
Yet the most competitive ballplayer of his generation remains curiously compliant about his fate. He talks a good game — alternately aggrieved and belligerent over his prolonged exile — but he continues to take his cuts without following through.
Though Rose was eligible to apply for reinstatement in 1990, he did not make formal application until 1997. When Commissioner Bud Selig rejected that application without affording Rose the courtesy of a hearing, the banished Hit King failed to seek a legal remedy. Attorneys have periodically approached Rose suggesting that they sue baseball on his behalf — some of them willing to be paid only if they win — but he has yet to authorize such a suit.
The agreement signed on Aug. 23, 1989, was designed to strip Rose of his power to appeal. It stipulates that Rose “will not avail himself of the opportunity to participate in a hearing concerning the allegations against him;” that Rose “acknowledges the commission has a factual basis to impose the penalty;” and that “he will not institute any legal proceedings of any nature against the commissioner or any of his representatives, either major league or any major league club.”
The agreement also states the commissioner “will not make any formal findings or determinations on ... the allegation that Peter Edward Rose bet on any Major League Baseball games.” When Giamatti subsequently expressed his personal opinion that Rose had indeed bet on games — employing a freedom of speech consistent with the terms of the agreement, if not its spirit — the Rose camp felt betrayed.
Rose's lawyers claimed Mr. Giamatti's statement violated the agreement, and made noises about having the document declared void. Mr. Giamatti's sudden death, only nine days after the agreement was signed, forever complicated the equation.
“For one thing, it never gave Giamatti time to reconsider in a calmer period the events that occurred,” said Barbara Pinzka, the public relations specialist hired to help Rose in late 1989. “Eventually, material came out that showed Giamatti's hands were not clean. Giamatti's reputation would have been questioned and his motives would have been questioned. ... I think baseball had it in for Pete from the beginning and by that I mean Bart Giamatti.”
Hallinan maintains Giamatti took no pleasure in punishing Rose. “Bart was saddened by it,” he said. “There was absolutely no sense of accomplishment. There were no three people that would have been happier to say that this was not the case, that Pete was innocent, (than Giamatti, Dowd and Hallinan).”
Giamatti's successors — first his deputy, Fay Vincent, and then his close friend Bud Selig — have rejected the idea of Rose's reinstatement as both inappropriate and inconsiderate of Giamatti's memory. The Rose case, Selig says, broke Giamatti's heart: “Literally.”
“Pete's dealing with a commissioner who has a personal vendetta,” Brennaman said. “I think Bud Selig holds him personally responsible for Bart Giamatti's death.”
“I think commissioners will not make any changes until Pete Rose is dead,” Pinzka said. “My prediction is he will go in the Hall of Fame the next day. I personally believe it's a personal dispute.”
Pinzka says it is unfair to speculate on whether Rose bet on baseball. “It's the core of the issue in terms of his suspension from baseball,” she said. “(But) Facts are what should decide it, not what people assume.”
After meeting with Rose, Dr. J. Randolph Hilliard, chairman of the University of Cincinnati's psychiatry department, concluded he had a “clinically significant gambling disorder.” Pinzka's research convinced her Rose is a gambling addict who has yet to hit bottom.
“I believe he bet on baseball,” said Reds coach Ron Oester, who has idolized Rose since boyhood. “Pete thought he was bigger than the game. He thought he could get away with anything. Gambling's a disease and it got him. If he did bet on baseball, it's the thing he knew the most about.”
Oester wonders if it's too late for Rose to change his story now, if he is too deep in denial.
“Other people who get in trouble in baseball are honest about it,” Dowd told the Associated Press. “That's the way they get redemption. Here, it's ridiculous. They just don't get it.”
Many of those who were closest to Rose during his Reds career are convinced confession is his only chance at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Former Reds second baseman Joe Morgan, a member of the Hall of Fame Board of Directors, is among those who have urged Rose to “come clean.”
“If he changed his position, public opinion would come down hard on Baseball to change theirs,” said Cal Levy, the Reds marketing director. “I think the majority of people would expect Baseball to react in kind.”
This is the theory. The reality is that Pete Rose needs to make the next move. Whatever it is.
Rose Special Report
