Sunday, August 22, 1999
The who, what, when of Rose's summer of shame
BY TOM GROESCHEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[rose]](http://reds.enquirer.com/img/photos/1999/08/082299court_146x150.jpg)
A federal agent escorts Rose from court after his sentencing for filing false income tax returns.
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Pete Rose received a lifetime suspension from baseball on Aug. 24, 1989. The following week, his picture was on the cover of Sports Illustrated with this caption:
“Pete Rose was banned from baseball for life for "acts which have stained the game.' Commissioner Bart Giamatti concluded that Rose had bet on Reds games. Thus ended the saddest chapter in baseball history since the Black Sox scandal of 1919.”
The investigation into Rose's gambling dominated the baseball news of 1989 and stirred high emotion in Cincinnati, his hometown. The sport's all-time hits leader (4,256) spent most of his playing career with the Reds, and was managing the team in 1989 when Major League Baseball announced he was being investigated for his gambling associations.
Rose loyalists deemed it a witch hunt. It was common knowledge that his personal life had included gambling and extramarital affairs, but hardcore Rose fans cared only about his baseball exploits. Some, including two Cincinnati judges, suggested baseball was out to get Rose.
But in the end, Rose had painted himself into legal corners he could not escape. In addition to his ban from baseball, he would be imprisoned five months for tax evasion.
Today, 10 years later, the main players in the Rose controversy still ring familiar to many Cincinnatians:
• Ron Peters, a Franklin, Ohio, restaurateur, was identified by his attorney as Rose's principal bookmaker. He later served two years in prison for cocaine trafficking and tax evasion.
• Tommy Gioiosa, a Massachusetts native who once lived with the Rose family, was identified by Peters as having run bets for Rose from 1984-86. He was sentenced to five years in prison for transporting cocaine and tax fraud.
• Paul Janszen, a Cincinnati native who served as an informant in a federal investigation of Peters, testified that he placed Rose's bets with Mr. Peters in 1987 and that Rose bet thousands of dollars on baseball games. Janszen served four months in a federal halfway house for failing to report income from sale of steroids.
• Mike Bertolini, a New York friend of Rose and former business partner in Hit King Marketing, owned a betting book, seized in October 1989 by U.S. postal inspectors, that had baseball betting slips with Rose's fingerprints on them. Bertolini later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit federal tax fraud.
• John Dowd, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who formerly worked in the Justice Department, headed the four-month investigation of Rose in 1989. Dowd had nine people tell his investigators that Rose had bet on baseball.
• A. Bartlett Giamatti, who became Commissioner of baseball on April 1, 1989, banned Rose from the game. Eight days after Rose's suspension, the chain-smoking Giamatti died of a heart attack at age 51.
The first hint of trouble, at least publicly, came Jan. 25, 1989. On that day Arnie Metz, a friend of Rose, cashed two Pik-Six tickets at Turfway Park in Florence, Ky., worth a total of $265,669.20. Rose denied reports that he was one partner of the winning ticket.
On Feb. 20, 1989, Rose left the Reds' training camp in Plant City, Fla., to meet with then-Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and other baseball officials in New York. The New York Times reported that the topic of the meeting was Rose's gambling.
On March 20, Baseball announced it was investigating Rose for “serious allegations” of an unspecified nature.
On March 24, the Kentucky State Racing Commission said that Turfway chairman Jerry Carroll admitted that he and Rose were the real winners of the Jan. 25 Pik-Six jackpot.
On April 5, federal court documents relating to an investigation of Peters revealed that a Cincinnati resident known as G-1, named in published reports as Rose, bet “an average of $2,000 per game on four to eight games per day, approxmiately four days per week” in the spring of 1987.
On April 13, Bristol County (Mass.) authorities turned over to Baseball evidence linking Rose and convicted bookmaker Joseph Cambra.
On April 22, Rose attorney Reuven Katz suggested that Giamatti disqualify himself from the Rose decision because of a letter the commissioner sent to U.S. District Court Judge Carl Rubin. The letter attested to Mr. Peters' cooperation with baseball regarding Rose, and asked for leniency in Judge Rubin's sentencing of Peters on drug trafficking and tax evasion charges.
Judge Rubin responded that he thought there was a “vendetta” against Rose by Mr. Giamatti. After criticism from leading law-school professors about his comments, Judge Rubin disqualified himself from sentencing Peters.
On May 9, Dowd submitted his report on Rose to Giamatti.
On May 11, Giamatti scheduled a May 25 hearing to give Rose a chance to respond.
On May 22, Giamatti postponed Rose's hearing until June 26.
On June 19, Rose filed suit against Mr. Giamatti, baseball and the Reds to halt the June 26 hearing. The suit asked that a common pleas judge, not Giamatti, make the ruling on Mr. Rose.
On June 22, Dowd said baseball investigators had telephone records and betting slips in Rose's handwriting, indicating that he bet on Reds games.
On June 24, Rose said he would not resign as Reds manager.
On June 25, in an unusual Sunday afternoon session, Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Norbert Nadel issued a temporary restraining order preventing Rose from being disciplined for 14 days. Nadel, with ESPN and the three major Cincinnati television stations broadcasting live, said Giamatti had “pre-judged Peter Edward Rose.”
On June 28, Rose scored another temporary victory in the courts when appellate judges refused to lift the temporary restraining order blocking Giamatti from conducting his hearing.
On July 3, federal judges in Cincinnati sent the case to U.S. District Judge John D. Holschuh Sr. in Columbus.
On July 5, Judge Holschuh announced he would take until at least July 17 to decide whether he had jurisdiction in the case.
On July 31, Holschuh ruled that Rose's case should be heard in federal court, not state court.
On Aug. 17, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit refused Rose's request to hear an appeal of the jurisdiction issue.
On Aug. 18, Judge Holschuh set Aug. 28 for the hearing on the preliminary injunction.
On Aug. 23, with Rose's options running out and evidence having mounted against him, baseball announced a press conference to reveal a suspension of Rose.
On Aug. 24 in New York, in a morning press conference with America watching on television, Giamatti banned Rose from the game for his gambling associations. In Cincinnati, the city stood mute as police phones temporarily stopped ringing, diners stopped eating, and shoppers gathered around televisions in downtown department stores.
“Nothing in this agreement shall be deemed either an admission or a denial by Peter Edward Rose of the allegation that he bet on any major league baseball game,” the formal pact between Mr. Rose and Giamatti read.
But then, Giamatti told reporters he'd concluded Rose bet on baseball.
Moments later in Cincinnati, a somber Rose faced the local media at then-Riverfront Stadium.
“As you can imagine, it's a very sad day,” he said.
Frank Williams, a relief pitcher for Rose's Reds in 1987 and '88, was with the Detroit Tigers when Rose was banned in '89. Williams, interviewed the day Rose was suspended, said he had seen the comings and goings in the Reds manager's office of people he regarded as suspicious.
“They weren't baseball people, but they were around constantly,” Williams said. “I knew it was only a matter of time before he got caught. It was out of control.”
Dave Parker, a former Red who was playing for Oakland when Mr. Rose was banned, said, “I think the situation would have been better if Pete had said all along, "Yeah, I have a problem and I need help.'”
Guilty or not, Tristate residents felt disappointment and sadness for the city's favorite son.
“At first I didn't care if he was guilty,” said Richard Sommerville, a Metro driver from Lockland. “But then when the suspension decision came, it was like a death in my family.”
Rose's ban from baseball was, at the time, the least of his problems. The following year he was imprisoned for five months and fined $50,000 for failing to report $345,967 in memorabilia income to the Internal Revenue Service.
According to a Harris poll released 10 days after Rose was banned, 84 percent of baseball fans in the survey were convinced Rose had bet on baseball and 68 percent believed he bet on his own team. But, 71 percent said he deserved to be in the Hall of Fame.
That will not happen, under the current rules. In 1991, the year before Rose would have been eligible for the Hall of Fame, the Hall's board of directors passed a rule that suspended players were no longer eligible.
Rose moved to Florida shortly after his release from prison, partly to avoid constant scrutiny from the Cincinnati media. He is now 58 years old, a virtual exile from his hometown.
On Thursday, Aug. 24, 1989, Rose was apologetic and emotional but also flashed some customary defiance.
“Regardless of what the commissioner said today,” he said, “I did not bet on baseball.”
He continues that denial to this day.
Rose Special Report
![[rose]](http://reds.enquirer.com/img/photos/1999/08/082299court_485x500.jpg)