THIS isn’t about what Pete Rose is about to admit, publicly and profitably, in his forthcoming book. Rose has looked America in the eye and lied from the moment he first declared his was innocent of betting on baseball.
It didn’t take a polygraph test to see this, just a quick glance in Rose’s eyes. A passing tour through John Dowd’s soon-to-be-completely-vindicated report never hurt, either. So nothing that follows Thursday’s release of “My Prison Without Bars” should stun even one person with a passing interest in Rose’s case.
In it, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, Rose says he gambled on baseball.
It’s what happens now that matters. We need to see remorse. We need to see real understanding that what he did violated a serious trust, that the punishment he’s received has been just, that whatever mercies may be shown him in the future are not entitlements but privileges, grace from a higher authority.
The thing that has aggrieved so many people about Rose’s behavior these past 14 years weren’t so much his sins of commission, but omission. What he did, he did. If he answers for that now, good for him. It’s the way he’s gone about trying to hoodwink us that’s far more troubling.
On one level, you can understand why he would do this. Rose is no innocent. He spent close to 30 years inside professional clubhouses, meaning he knew the most sacred credo in baseball.
In the mob, there used to be a saying: You deal, you die.
In baseball, it went like this: You gamble, you’re gone.
Rose knew this, and was willing to auction off every ounce of his soul to try to get us to believe him. As a gambler, he’d learned to trust none but his own instincts, no matter how badly those instincts betrayed him in the past. Perhaps it took 14 years for him to finally understand that America wasn’t buying what he was selling, 14 years to recognize that playing the victim wasn’t working according to plan.
Everyone knows a degenerate gambler, so everyone can sympathize with the way compulsive gambling can ruin a person’s life and trample upon his dignity. Some lose their homes. Some lose fingers. Rose lost nine years – and counting – of the right to call himself a Hall of Famer. Some might say he got off easy, in the big picture. Rose would sooner have offered up an ear.
We aren’t asking for self-mutilation, or self-immolation. Just remorse. Just a genuine accounting of how gravely Rose mishandled this mess from day one. Just a coming-clean, coming-out party with America. One that isn’t designed merely to sell books. One that isn’t designed merely to satisfy the basic requirements of Bud Selig’s plan to finally add Rose’s plaque to Cooperstown’s walls.
I still believe that Rose’s lasting punishment should be a clear, concise summary to be etched on his plaque, so fans for all time will know that in addition to amassing 4,256 base hits, in addition to hitting .303 across 24 seasons, he also received a 14-year banishment for betting on baseball. To me, that qualifies as fair parole.
We are going to hear Pete Rose say he’s sorry an awful lot this week. He’ll say it in a press conference Thursday. He’ll say it on TV with Charlie Gibson that night.
He’d better mean it. He’d better be sincere. He’d better not treat us like he surely treated his teammates and his loved ones all those years he had betting slips all but spilling out of his pockets, pretending they were something else.
He’s tried lying to America for 14 years, and it hasn’t gotten him anywhere. He’d better try something else. He needs to do more than say he’s sorry. He’d better be sorry.
We’ll know if he is or not. Believe me.