In 1990, I was walking down a hall inside a minimum-security federal jail near Marion, Illinois. Not a fun stroll, but I was a Cincinnati TV news producer getting video of where one of the city’s favorite sons would soon take a bunk for a couple of months on a tax evasion conviction.
“Say hello to Pete!” one inmate called out.
Indeed. Despite all the ink and airtime we’ve been drenched in over the past few days, I’ve been amazed, this 14 years since then, that anyone, anywhere, believed that Pete Rose didn’t bet on baseball — maybe because I’d trudged through baseball’s lengthy Dowd Report investigation as part of my job. Rose bet, bet often, and bet on everything.
So now, making cash from a new book and recanting all the lies of the past, Rose wants baseball’s, and baseball fans’, forgiveness — plus a place in the Hall of Fame and, um, maybe a manager’s job somewhere.
Knowing more than a bit about Rose, take it from me: he’s counted on a fading collective memory of what happened and when, but it just doesn’t look like the “oops, I made a mistake” tack, a common one in today’s victim mentality society, is going to work.
Backfiring badly is more like it. Rose’s status as a great player isn’t in question, but his lack of integrity off the field is, as well as his committing baseball’s cardinal sin, betting on the game. Baseball writers, some of the grandest blowhards of the sports journalism pack, are airing it out over this controversy.
For my betting slip, the only “sorry” I see with Rose is that’s he’s sorry fans’ memories didn’t fade quickly enough. He finally had to come clean because there was no other way to get to first base with baseball to begin a road back to where he wants to be most, the Hall of Fame. Don’t forget, if he ever gets in, there’s even more money to be made.
THE WORST-KEPT SECRET in local news is finally out of the bag, as WCNC’s Russ Riesinger has left the station after his contract wasn’t renewed. This was a story that most newsies knew about since early fall 2003, but both sides were mum. News ratings at 36 aren’t getting much better, and chips (or anchors) will fall where they may. No replacement for RR has been named yet.Stay tuned.
This article appears in Jan 14-20, 2004.
