A bad bet …

Coach and Athletic Director, August, 2003 by Herman L. Masin

When the Great Scorer comes to mark our name, we don't believe He is going to mark against us for plucking the petals off a Rose named Pete.

A beautiful ballplayer? Absolutely. A fatally flawed person? Absolutely. He is a confessed gambler, who committed file unpardonable sin of betting on major league baseball.

A. Bartlett Giamatti, greatest of all the commissioners, collected all the evidence, confronted Rose with it, had him sign a confession, and barred him from baseball.

That should have been the end of it--as it was with the Black Sox Scandal. But with the passage of time, Rose began pitching curves to his brain dead fans. First, he denied betting against Cincinnati. Next, he denied betting on Cincinnati. And, finally, he denied betting on baseball.

Enough dumb people began believing him, and a commissioner named Bud Selig turned monkey. He stopped believing any evil, seeing any evil, hearing any evil or reading any evil. He even began talking about allowing Rose to return to baseball.

Rose pushed a little too hard. Just hard enough to get the original investigator of the gambling charge to release the facts to the public.

Here is the official scorecard on Pete Rose's betting record:

"Rose made 388 bets for $852,400 in the first half of the 1987 season, and bet $116,000 on the Reds in 52 games."