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March 1, 2012
Pete Rose believes that there's no better ambassador for the game than him.
Pete Rose believes that there's no better ambassador for the game than him.
Retired baseball player Pete Rose wonders if he will ever be given a second chance. (Kelvin Kuo-US PRESSWIRE)
LAS VEGAS — Pete Rose is at peace.
At least, Pete Rose says he is at peace. Sure, he'd be the happiest guy in the world if he woke up tomorrow and the commissioner of Major League Baseball reinstated him to the game, ending a suspension from baseball that's 22 years long and counting. Yet baseball's all-time hit king says he's no longer consumed by that possibility. He's not mad or bitter at anyone, not anymore. And he doesn't say a prayer every night, hoping that he'll someday get into the Hall of Fame.
Charlie Hustle's 70 years old now, and he has other things to live for: five grandchildren, the youngest of whom was born late last year; a stunning girlfriend who is four decades his junior and who has posed nude for Playboy; and a window-filled 14th-floor condo at Panorama Towers, just a few blocks off the Las Vegas Strip. He also has a steady job at a memorabilia store at Caesars Palace, where he sits at a table as frequently as 25 days a month, signing autographs, posing for photos, saying thank you to every fan who tells him he oughta be in the Hall of Fame.
And yet, as he was plowing through an egg sandwich at Planet Hollywood before a recent autograph-signing stint, the more Rose talked about life now, the more a simple fact seemed ever-more obvious: Two decades since a baseball betting scandal ushered one of the game's all-time stars to the game's permanent ineligible list, Rose's legacy remains entirely out of his hands.
Will he get into the Hall of Fame, or won't he? And will it happen before he dies?
"The only thing I don't quite understand about the whole situation is: Why is it so difficult for me to get a second chance?" Rose told FOXSports.com. "In most other walks of life, talking about alcohol, drugs, spousal abuse, you get another chance. I just chose the wrong vice. … Any time you get a life (sentence), it's a long time. I mean, the guy that shot the pope got a second chance!"
Yet there's one other fact that makes the never-ending Pete Rose Hall of Fame debate especially relevant now. After this season, baseball will face the biggest reckoning yet for the biggest dark spot in recent baseball history. Two players who've come to define the steroid era — Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds (not to mention Sammy Sosa) — will be eligible for the Hall of Fame. Baseball will have to decide whether to overlook the mounds of circumstantial evidence and just say, well, there never was a positive steroid test, there never was a smoking gun, was there?
Or baseball will have to look at the two best players of the era and deny them entry to Cooperstown.
It's a complicated moral and logical debate, where absolutism faces the everyone's-doing-it mentality that caused baseball to look the other way as performance-enhancing drug use grew out of control.
And you better believe Pete Rose has some complicated and, like many of us, still-confused thoughts on baseball's coming Judgment Day. Players in the steroid era desecrated the game; Pete Rose desecrated the game. Players from the steroid era are becoming eligible for the Hall of Fame, but it'll take a pardon from Bud Selig before the Baseball Writers' Association of America is even allowed to vote on Pete Rose.
What's the difference, when it comes down to it?
Rose believes both Clemens and Bonds deserve to be in the Hall. No question. He empathizes with their situation. Though Clemens and Bonds aren't banned from baseball, it feels like they've at least been temporarily blackballed.
"What's the Hall of Fame going to be?" Rose asked incredulously. "Is it going to (have) no hit king, no home run king, no guy with the most Cy Youngs in it? That can't be good for the game. And that certainly can't be good for the Hall of Fame. Because believe it or not, the Hall of Fame isn't a bunch of altar boys."
Yet in the next breath, he excoriates how steroids blemished the game. Say what you will about Pete Rose's alleged out-of-control gambling while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds. That had nothing to do with his 24 big-league records as a player, from his 4,256 hits to his 3,562 games played to his 3,315 singles to his 14,053 at-bats.
"I believe the worst thing you can do as a player is do anything that dickers with the statistics of baseball," Rose said. "The statistics of baseball are the most sacred thing in sports. Baseball is all about its history. When you talk about steroids, I'm the wrong guy to talk to. Wouldn't you like to talk to Roger Maris about steroids? Wouldn't you like to talk to Babe Ruth about steroids? Hank Aaron won't talk about it." He paused a moment, then he smirked. "If anyone gets 4,257 (hits) and is linked to steroids, then I'll have something to say."
Rose hates the caricature he's become in the media. He still says he wasn't a big gambler back in the day. After all, he never gambled away his family's car payment or house payment. But the details of the Dowd Report, which showed the extent of Rose's gambling on baseball, painted a different picture: wagers of between $2,000 and $5,000 per game, as many as 50 games a week, some of those wagered on the team he managed. (He did, as had been repeated over and over, always bet on the Reds.)
He also says gambling wasn't the official reason he was banned from the game.
Think he's crazy? Rose immediately produces the six-page document, signed by him and then-commissioner Bart Giamatti, where he accepted being placed on baseball's permanently ineligible list. Sure enough, near the end of the document is this sentence: "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."
"Bart Giamatti had to do what he had to do," Rose said. "God bless Bart Giamatti. Because I am totally convinced that if he'd have lived — he died (one week) after he suspended me — if he'd have lived, he'd have given me a second chance in a year. I'm totally convinced Bart would have done that. Bart was a very, very intelligent and fair man."
That, of course, is not what happened, and so this is where Pete Rose finds himself 22 years later: Leaving Planet Hollywood, walking under fake clouds painted onto the ceiling at the shopping **** at Caesars Palace, and going into a memorabilia store called Antiquities.
The store features a giant sign, "PETE ROSE HERE." A handful of people are waiting. The first one drops more than $1,000 to have Charlie Hustle sign two jerseys and a bat and pose for a picture. People share stories about their connections with Rose. One tells of watching him play at Dodger Stadium one night in the 1970s. Another tells Rose he feels like he's known him his whole life, and that they'd make great fishing buddies.
In between autographs, Rose looks over at his two-month-old grandson, Jordan Pete Rose. "Ehhhhh, shorty!" Rose yelps. He motions to his daughter-in-law, and she brings over the grandson. Around the infant, Rose's often-prickly demeanor softens: "Hey shorty, there's no crying in baseball!" he said, squeezing his grandson's cheeks. "Hey, pee wee!"
Unless he is reinstated, this is the life Pete Rose will live: always at the fringes of the game he loves, never back inside it. He believes there's no better ambassador for the game than him. He plans to go to this summer's Hall of Fame induction for Barry Larkin, who came up with the Reds when Rose was managing. But there's no way of knowing when, or if, Rose will be allowed inside those doors.
Instead, he'll keep sitting at this table, signing "PETE ROSE, HIT KING, 4,256," as the line dwindles outside.
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