Tuesday, March 28, 2000
Rose takes swing at baseball bigwigs
But playing game is as good as sex
New York Daily News
Banned baseball legend Pete Rose takes a few hard swings at his enemies, drools over Hillary Rodham Clinton and explains why he's one of the top athletes of the 20th century in a feisty new interview in the April issue of Playboy.
“How could I not be in the top 50 of ESPN's "Greatest Athletes of the Century?'” Rose boasts, comparing himself to the 1972 Olympic swimming hero Mark Spitz. “That guy worked two weeks. I worked 24 years.”
Rose, 59, says he finds many notable, middle-aged women attractive.
“Hillary Clinton is sexy,” the Western Hills High grad says. “Same thing goes for (Bob) Dole's wife. I like Barbara Walters. I find all kinds of women sexy. I'm not queer, so why wouldn't I?”
Rose doesn't condemn either Atlanta reliever John Rocker or former Reds owner Marge Schott, both of whom got in trouble for racist remarks.
On Schott: “I don't think Marge Schott is racist. I think Marge don't like anybody.”
On Rocker: “Here is a young kid who made some stupid statements he probably regrets.”
Rose, who agreed to a lifetime ban from Major League Baseball following a scathing 1989 report on his gambling, saves his choicest swipes for baseball bigwigs.
“If I had been busted for drugs instead of gambling,” he says, “I'd still be managing the Reds, and baseball would be paying for my rehab.”
Rose accuses the late Bart Giammati, the commissioner who brokered the deal that ousted him from the major leagues, of being a jealous power monger who didn't want to compete with Rose's fame.
The man with the most hits in the history of the game (4,256), a lifetime .303 average, two World Series rings (1975 and 1976) and 16 All-Star selections is contemptuous of baseball's holy shrine. “Going to the Hall of Fame is not going to make me a living,” he says.
On baseball: “Playing baseball is as good as sex,” Rose says. “The sixth game of the 1975 World Series against Boston was like sex. It don't get better than that.”
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