LAS VEGAS — Pete Rose turned 83 on April 14, which was exactly two months after Cincinnati Reds teammate Don Gullett died, a month after teammate Bill Plummer died, just 10 days after another, Pat Zachry, was gone.
All were in their 70s.
It’s enough to make any man taste his own mortality. For one who played baseball like he thought he might live forever, it clearly haunts his faded hopes for immortality.
“What, are they waiting for me to die?” Rose said. “Wouldn’t that be horrible if I died next week and then next year they reinstated me?”
Pete Rose speaks on gambling, Hall of Fame, 2024 Cincinnati Reds
Pete Rose sat down with The Enquirer’s Gordon Wittenmyer to talk about his ban, MLB’s gambling ties and more.
Thirty-five years after he was banned from baseball for betting on games, Rose said he’s given up on ever being inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Ever?
“If I’m gone it don’t matter,” he said. “Who the f— wants to go in when you’re dead?
Then he paused.
“Although the Hall of Fame is for your family,” he said quietly.
Rose sat with the Enquirer recently in a corner of the lobby of his luxury condo building, roughly an Elly De La Cruz throw from the Las Vegas Strip, for an interview that lasted more than two hours on subjects ranging from the current Reds to steroids in the game to, mostly, his continued banishment from a sports league that has — to be generous — redefined its relationship with gambling in recent years while embracing a franchise move to Las Vegas even amid new betting scandals this year.
“I just got to outlive ‘em,” Rose said with a smile.
Which ones?
“One guy is responsible,” he said. “Manfred. He’s the one guy who can say yay or nay.”
That’s MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, who reviewed Rose’s case in 2015 soon after taking office and rejected an appeal for reinstatement and who shows no signs of changing that stance.
Rose already has outlived the commissioner who instituted the ban, Bart Giamatti, who died a month later. Two more have come and gone from the office since.
But baseball never has been on shakier ethical ground in the hard-line enforcement of gambling violations that earned mortal-sin status with the fallout of the 1919 World Series fix by the Chicago White Sox — an event that led to the creation of the commissioner’s office in the first place and the lifetime bans of eight Chicago players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson.
With the proliferation of legalized sports betting in most of the country, sports leagues, including MLB, have quickly capitalized by partnering with sports books and gambling sites. Broadcasters, including former players, routinely offer prop betting advice on game broadcasts.
Some predict this relationship will be part of keeping broadcast rights lucrative through that fast-changing landscape as the distribution model shifts from cable TV to direct-to-consumer streaming.
Meanwhile, the league that once suspended Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle in the 1980s for working as part-time, meet-and-greet “ambassadors” for casinos in Atlantic City has approved the Oakland Athletics’ move to Las Vegas and allowed a brick-and-mortar sports book to be built into the Wrigley Field structure at the corner of Addison Street and Sheffield Avenue — nine miles, or 13 Chicago “L” stops, from the site where World Series games were thrown in 1919.
In the other city where Series games were fixed that year, another sports book is now just a few steps across Joe Nuxhall Way in Cincinnati from Great American Ball Park — which also displays a huge sign above the right-field seats advertising the betting parlor.
“They don’t care about gambling. They don’t care about gambling on baseball,” Rose said. “That’s why they got these windows inside the ballparks.
“That’s why ESPN updates the games in the fifth inning, and they make other odds for the rest of the game.”
Baseball will say it cares even more about gambling on baseball when it comes to players and other personnel because of those factors — that it must in this new climate.
Manfred made his position clear in July last year during his All-Star media event when the Enquirer asked him how he reconciles Rose’s continued banishment with MLB’s reversal of nearly a century of bright red lines separating the institution from even perceived connections to gambling-related industries or sites.
“We’ve always approached the issue of gambling from the proposition that players and other people who are in position to influence the outcome of the game are going to be subject to a different set of rules than everyone else,” Manfred said. “Pete Rose violated what is Rule 1 of baseball and the consequences of that are clear in the rules.’’
Manfred also downplayed the financial significance of baseball’s sponsorship and marketing deals with gambling interests and added that “I don’t see Las Vegas as any different than any other city in America” that now has legalized sports betting.
Contacted for this story, the commissioner’s office said Manfred’s position has not changed since those comments, even in the wake of the scandal that got precariously close to baseball’s greatest, highest-paid and internationally profitable star, Shohei Ohtani.
Before Ohtani’s interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, was convicted of bank fraud for years of stealing from Ohtani’s accounts to cover gambling debts, Rose offered this comment in March for a video that went viral on social media: “Well, back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I wish I’d had an interpreter. I’d be scot-free.”
He’s more careful with comments on the subject these days but still wonders, like many on the outside looking in, how plausible the Mizuhara confession of stealing $16 million of Ohtani’s money over time without the superstar knowing it — well before his $700 million deal with the Dodgers — and how quick baseball was to separate its biggest star from the scandal.
“I find it hard to believe that I can have a friend that’s with me every day of the year, and he can steal $16 million out of my account and not know it,” Rose said. “How’s that possible?”
The Ohtani “investigation” was different in scope and jurisdiction than the Rose investigation.
A larger federal investigation caught Mizuhara in its web after discovering the activity using Ohtani’s accounts and reportedly exonerated Ohtani of any knowing involvement, even after Mizuhara’s initial public admission of guilt changed to exclude Ohtani’s knowledge of any aspect of the activity.
Rose’s investigation was conducted by the commissioner’s office and its special counsel, John Dowd, who submitted a 225-page report after three to four months of interviews and documentation. Roughly the same amount of time was then spent reviewing the material and interviewing and negotiating with Rose and his lawyer before Giamatti announced the ban in August 1989.
“I was wrong. I f—d up. But that was ’89,” Rose said. “I’ve been suspended since ’89. How many years is that?”
Aug. 24 will be the 35th anniversary.
“For betting on my own team to win,” he said. “And no one ever said I didn’t bet on my team to win, because I did. I would never think about betting against my team.
“That’s a long time to be suspended.”
It seems at least problematic for the league to feed the ubiquity of sports gambling in the country by removing its institutional firewalls between that industry and its own for the sake of new revenue sources — and then, in turn, to hold its employees to higher standards. No matter how much more necessary that new, cozy relationship with gambling might seem to make the heightened focus on those rules.
Never mind how that new reality frames what’s already a 35-year sentence for Rose that he estimates has cost him millions.
Hall of Famer Rod Carew, a widely respected and thoughtful baseball lifer who also coached young hitters for decades, called baseball’s stance “hypocritical.”
“How can you keep Pete Rose out and have a sports book at the Reds stadium?” he said in a tweet in February of last year.
A follower responded that Rose crossed a “pretty clear line,” to which Carew responded:
“If they can embrace gambling to the level of putting it in the stadium they can forgive Pete and recognize him for the Great he is. That’s the point.”
Mike Schmidt, another Hall of Famer and former Philadelphia Phillies teammate of Rose, also has shown support over the years and even suggested a “parole”-like process for the league’s all-time hit king.
“All I can tell you for sure is that I’m not going to go to bed every night in the near future and say a prayer that I hope I go in the Hall of Fame,” said Rose, the Western Hills grad whose records for hits, at-bats and games played might never be broken. “This may sound cocky — I am cocky, by the way — but I know what kind of player I was. I know what kind of records I got. My fans know what kind of player I was.
“And if it’s OK for them to put me in the Hall of Fame, I don’t need a bunch of guys on a committee somewhere. I see guys that don’t go to the Hall of Fame today that I think should go to the Hall of Fame.”
He mentions Dave Parker, the two-time batting champ and 1978 MVP from Courter Tech.
While Rose talked, a man walked past and noticed the familiar face beneath the all-white Reds ballcap.
“As I live and breathe, Pete Rose!” the middle-aged man said, extending his hand for a handshake and brief exchange.
Rose estimates his fans still outnumber his critics. But he also wonders how his legacy — never mind his chances for reinstatement — might look as the years pass, along with the passings of more and more of those who actually saw him play.
“I’m losing more fans every day,” he said. “Not much I can do about it. Just do appearances when you’re around baseball and baseball people. I learned a long time ago you can’t make everybody happy all the time.
“It can be 50 years from now and there’s some people who are going to say don’t give him a second chance. There are just some people like that, and don’t know any of the facts of what’s going on.”
The undisputed fact is that Rose bet on baseball, including on his own team, while he was the Reds manager in the 1980s.
The rules against that were — and are — so well known they are posted in every clubhouse in the majors to this day.
But could there yet be room for taking time served into account within the context of baseball’s dramatically altered relationship with gambling?
He never was accused of fixing games, like Hall of Famers Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker were in the early part of the last century.
He also was never accused of tanking.
That’s the other potentially shaky footing MLB has when staking out high ground on this issue.
The recent wave of teams that have intentionally tanked entire seasons to rebuild for success years later — including big-market teams such as Theo Epstein’s Cubs early in the previous decade — represents a widespread breach of baseball’s internal rules of conduct.
Specifically, by engaging in those practices, the executives from those teams violated Rule 21, paragraph (a), under “Misconduct in Playing Baseball” from The Official Professional Baseball Rules Book.”
It’s the first paragraph within the same rule that led to Rose’s ban (which is covered in the fourth paragraph).
It stipulates that “Any player or person connected with a Club … who shall intentionally lose or attempt to lose … shall be declared permanently ineligible.”
Should Theo Epstein or even former White Sox general manager Rick Hahn — who followed the Cubs’ lead in Chicago with a tanking effort that failed to produce postseason success — or any of another dozen or so execs who tanked be declared permanently ineligible?
“If that’s what the rule says,” Rose said. “That’s why they make rules, isn’t it?
“You’re supposed to try to win every game you play,” he said. “What does that tell your fans?”
Manfred for years rejected that teams were tanking, or not trying to win, arguing the legitimacy of so-called tanking rebuilds as multi-year plans for success.
Whether that’s a defensible position as it relates to the rule, MLB and the players’ union have agreed to steps in the past two collective bargaining agreements to try to incentivize practices that in theory should lead to less tanking.
Not that Rose expects any of that to make a difference.
“I don’t want to say that I’ve given up on being reinstated. But I’ve given up on being reinstated,” he said.
It probably didn’t help his cause that former Pittsburgh Pirates infielder Tucupita Marcano earlier this month became the first player since Rose to be declared permanently ineligible by MLB for gambling on baseball. He was found to have gambled $87,000 on baseball games, including Pirates games (strangely, winning none of those bets).
Four other players were given one-year suspensions for gambling on other sports as part of the same announcement.
Considering that a generation of young Americans are now raised not only on high-tech devices but commonplace sports betting, this may be only the start of a new era of problems for professional sports leagues — all the more potentially problematic for the lines they choose to blur with their own relationships to the gambling industry.
The NBA just banned for life Jontay Porter, who was found to not only have bet on his own games but also against his own performance on prop bets.
Rose had not heard about the Porter case until this conversation and cursed under his breath when told about it.
Asked if something like that makes him cringe when he thinks about its potential impact on his status, Rose said, “I’m cringed out.”
“You know one thing I never did and I never will is I never worry or concentrate on things I cannot control,” he said. “And, sure, would I rather be in the Hall of Fame? Absolutely. Why? Because I deserve it. Look what I did as a player.
“But if I never make it, I never make it. Not a damn thing I can do about it.”
Yet it clearly occupies a lot of his thoughts (which, albeit, might be easy to suggest during a lengthy conversation on the subject initiated by the one making the suggestion).
He makes his living on his baseball fame, even his lack of inclusion in the Hall of Fame, with regular speaking engagements from Chicago to New York and, always, Cincinnati. He has been known to sign apologies for gambling on baseball during autograph shows and to sign that 225-page Dowd Report.
Whether he’ll ever see his likeness on bronze in Cooperstown, Rose said he agrees with voters who have kept the known steroid users out of the Hall.
“Steroid guys took unauthorized steroids that helped them beat records,” he said. “Taking steroids is not fair to Hank Aaron or Willie Mays or to Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth. Because when you’re enhancing your ability to play by taking the drug it shouldn’t be right, shouldn’t be allowed.”
Because they cheated?
“I agree with that,” he said.
That’s one significant difference between Rose and those who have been suspended for performance enhancers but remain eligible to be involved with the league, and, consequently, for the Hall of Fame.
Nobody who ever saw Rose play or played with him accused him of cheating the game.
“Sh— no,” he said. “I did everything every f—ing day to win the game.”
Rose maintains as he has for years that he regrets betting on baseball and that if he had it to do over again, he wouldn’t do it.
Asked if he would do anything different since the suspension was imposed 35 years ago, he said, “No.”
“I maintain the fact that I’m sorry. I wish it hadn’t happened. But it’s part of life. It happened. And there’s nothing I can do to change it,” he said. “Just think about it. This is America, and if you’re a clean-cut guy you usually get a second chance. Everybody in baseball it seems — maybe I’m wrong — but if you take drugs you get a second chance. If you beat your wife you get a second chance. If you’re an alcoholic you get a second chance. If you’re a gambler you don’t get a second chance
“Is that about right?”
So far. At least when it comes to MLB and its commissioner.
But Manfred also has mentioned an important distinction when talking about Rose. MLB’s ban does not prevent the Hall of Fame from allowing Rose to be considered.
The Hall made him ineligible in a separate move in 1991 as he approached what otherwise would have been his first year on the ballot. It has upheld that decision with subsequent votes of its boards.
That’s a step it did not take for Joe Jackson or any of the other banned White Sox players when the Hall opened the process for its inaugural class 15 years after those players were banned. Jackson received a few scattered votes but never came close to being elected.
The first year of the Hall’s ban, Rose received 41 write-in votes, which were thrown out and not counted.
“Ultimately, the board has continued to look at this numerous times over 35 years and continues to believe that the rule put in place is the right one for the Hall of Fame,” said Josh Rawitch, Hall of Fame president. “And for those who have not been reinstated from the permanently ineligible list, they shouldn’t be eligible for our ballots.”
Rose’s interest in being reinstated goes beyond the Hall of Fame. Even in his 80s, he said he’d welcome the chance to be active around the game again.
“I would do whatever I could do to help baseball become a better game,” he said. “Is that on the field? Is that in the clubhouse? Is that in the city? Whatever it is.”
In some ways he’s in the clubhouse now, in the form of T-shirts that coaches and the occasional player can be seen wearing that say in bold letters across the front: “Cincinnati Invented Hustle.”
“That’s kind of true,” Rose said with a chuckle.
When it comes to the Hall of Fame, Rose wonders if some of the off-field perceptions of him get added to the case keeping him from being reinstated.
“I could be wrong, but the Hall of Fame is all about numbers. They don’t rate Hall of Famers by being nice guys,” Rose said. “There’s a lot of assholes in the Hall of Fame.”
Is Rose saying he’s one of those guys?
“No, I’m not,” he said. “I can honestly tell you, I think in my lifetime, I’ve never been an asshole to anybody. I’ve disagreed with people, but that doesn’t make you an asshole.”
There’s no doubt a lot of people in the game over the years and fans to this day want to see Rose reinstated. Two Ohio state legislators just this season drafted a petition to take Rose’s case to the commissioner’s office, based on MLB’s “hypocritical” relationship with gambling while upholding the ban.
“I appreciate that. But it’s kind of beating a dead horse,” Rose said.
“Everyone seems to give me a second chance except the commissioner,” he said, “which I just don’t understand. Is that going to make him a bad guy if he reinstates me?”
Maybe the bigger question is what’s in it for him and his office. The obvious easiest action to take is no action.
And if there are any fears of bad optics — whether in what reinstatement might signal in itself or in whatever comes next with Rose’s involvement in the game — what’s the counter argument? What’s MLB’s benefit?
“Good question,” Rose said, pausing several long beats. “I don’t know what their benefit is.
“All of a sudden being fair?”
