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Two Decades Enough to Forgive Rose

Posted Aug 31, 2009 6:28PM By Terence Moore (RSS feed)

Filed Under: MLB Hall of Fame

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Pete RoseHas it been 20 years? Wow, that's me. I'm glancing at the last photo in the middle of Roger Kahn's mostly toothless book in collaboration with Pete Rose called "My Story." The date of the photo is August 24, 1989, and as I study it, I remember feeling as if somebody had shoved a resin bag down my throat.

Moments before somebody snapped this photo in Cincinnati, baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti did the unthinkable in New York: He ignored Rose's distinction as the game's all-time hits leader, and he knocked an automatic trip to Cooperstown away from Rose with a lifetime ban from baseball for gambling on the sport.

That's me, all right. I'm sitting in the front row of a news conference that Rose called at Riverfront Stadium after Giamatti's shocker. I'm looking down at my notebook for what appears to be an eternity instead of glancing up at Rose, standing the length of two Louisville Sluggers away. Twenty years later, I still remember why: I was angry over Rose, Giamatti and the whole situation. So I'm sitting there, scribbling and thinking between clenched teeth as Rose delivered his version of saying "I am not a crook" by uttering "I did not bet on baseball."

I'm scribbling and thinking about Rose as my favorite player ever as a youth.

I'm scribbling and thinking about how he became my favorite player as a journalist.

I'm scribbling and thinking about how I covered most of his famous moments during the latter part of his career.

I'm scribbling and thinking about how he got himself into this mess.

I'm scribbling and thinking about how he just lied when he said with a straight face that he did not bet on baseball, especially since baseball investigators discovered his fingerprints on numerous betting slips.

I'm scribbling and thinking about becoming a Hall of Fame voter within the next couple of years and about how I couldn't vote for him courtesy of the rules on the ballot that say you must consider "character" and "integrity."

I'm scribbling and thinking about wanting to cry.

Well, it's been 20 years, and with dry eyes, I'm scribbling and thinking about redemption, and mostly about how it's time for Rose to become bronzed with the rest of his peers in Cooperstown. In other words, it's time for everybody to forgive and to forget, including Bud Selig, the current commissioner, who was a close friend of Giamatti who died just days after banning Rose.

The thing is, Selig will never reinstate Rose, and the commissioner suggested as much in this space a few weeks ago.

Even if Selig did show mercy in this case that deserves as much, Rose would have another problem: Time. Unlike before, I can't help his Hall of Fame chances in the future with a stroke of my pen, and neither can any of my colleagues in the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA). That's because we only can vote for those who are no farther than 15 years removed from their last game, and Rose is beyond that mark. As a result, members of the Veterans Committee would have to decide Rose's Hall of Fame fate, and that includes all living members of Cooperstown .

Not good for Rose. Not now, and likely such will be the case forever. That's because most living members of Cooperstown are vehemently against Rose's entry since betting on baseball has been the game's unpardonable sin. It has roots to the Black Sox Scandal that nearly killed baseball after the 1919 World Series.

Their position is justified, but not when you match all of that against a couple of more compelling points.

First, this is a sporting culture of second chances -- maybe of six and seven chances if you're talking about Michael Vick, who is back in the NFL after issues spanning from flipping off his hometown fans to ugly incidents at security check points at airports to that dogfighting stuff. Elsewhere, despite government proof that they've been artificially enhanced for years, Alex Rodriguez is still playing, and the same goes for Manny Ramirez and others. And do you remember the ugly brawl at The Palace of Auburn Hills? Probably not, because most have forgotten it.

The poster child for that brawl was Ron Artest, but he continues to play, prosper and star and rightfully so.

Artest has paid his price.

Rose has, too, which brings me to the last of those compelling points. In addition to a forced exile for two decades from the game that was his life (and that's punishment enough), Rose did confess his sins a few years ago. It was clumsy, but he nevertheless mentioned through another book that he bet, not only baseball, but on the Cincinnati Reds, his hometown team and eventually his team as a player and as a manager. It also was my team as a youth, especially when it was the Big Red Machine during the 1970s, with Rose as its ever-hustling sparkplug.

After we moved from South Bend, Ind., to Cincinnati during the late 1960s, my two brothers and I lived at old Crosley Field and later Riverfront Stadium. I was fascinated by the high-energy guy who sprinted to first base after walks, snatched fly balls out of the air with a quick snap of his wrists and dove, nose first, into bases.

His former wife, Karolyn, did a commercial on local television for Gulden's mustard, saying with a smile from her kitchen, "Hi, I'm Pete Rose's wife, and we use Gulden's golden brown mustard, just like they do at Crosley Field."

I still use the stuff.

Then there was May 14, 1975, Tony Perez's birthday and the first time I was in a major league clubhouse. I went to school up the road in Oxford, Ohio at Miami University , and I was a scared college newspaper writer coming to interview one of the Cincinnati Reds radio announcers with Miami (Ohio) ties. Rose walked up to me in the clubhouse with a smile, stuck out his hand and asked for my name. I fumbled with a response (I mean, this was my guy), and he nodded with another smile and said, "Well, when you work for the Cincinnati Enquirer someday, we'll talk more."

Two years later, I'm at the Cincinnati Enquirer. I'm walking through the Reds clubhouse, and I get a tap on my shoulder. It's Rose. He remembered my name.

Over the next decade or so, while working for the Cincinnati Enquirer and later for the San Francisco Examiner and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I was there for nearly everything Peter Edward Rose.

I was there during much of Rose's 44-game hitting streak, second only to Joe DiMaggio's impossible number of 56. I was there when Rose became baseball's most wined-and-dined free agent ever at the time before he left an absolutely shattered Cincinnati to sign with the Philadelphia Phillies. I was there during the 1980 World Series when Phillies catcher Bob Boone dropped a pop fly in Game 6 but a hustling Rose charged from first base to snatch the ball before it hit the ground. I was there when Rose cried in the arms of his son, Petey, at first base at Riverfront after his single landed in left field to break Ty Cobb's all-time hits record. I was there a few days after Rose returned to an absolutely giddy Cincinnati as player-manager of the Reds.

I also was there when he lied about not betting on baseball.

I've forgiven him for that.

So should everybody.

Terence Moore is a national columnist and commentator for FanHouse. He is a frequent panelist on "Rome Is Burning", an ESPN show hosted by Jim Rome, that is seen Monday through Friday at 4:30 PM ET. Moore spent more than three decades working for major newspapers, including 26 years as an award-winning sports columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He resides in Atlanta .

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