I'm not sure I care about the "does Pete Rose belong in the Hall of Fame" question all that much.  I've never been particularly up-in-arms about the matter one way or the other, quite frankly, and in fact I'm getting more than a bit sick of all the constant maelstrom surrounding Rose and the Hall.

The latest chapter in this seemingly endless saga, however, is so tawdry as to beg--if not require outright--commentary.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you already know that Pete Rose has publicly acknowledged that he bet on baseball games (including those of his own team) as manager of the Cincinnati Reds in the 1980s.  I saw a clip of Rose's interview with ABC's Charles Gibson on ESPN's Outside the Lines segment on Monday night where Rose copped to gambling on baseball.  

The interview segment, however, was something of an anticlimax; it had already been widely reported that Rose's forthcoming book contained the much anticipated public admission.

Now, I'm not sure if I'm any more cynical than the next guy, but I simply can't concoct any fathomable explanation for the latest turn of events except an extremely negative one...negative, at least, as it reflects on Rose.

Let's review...

Rose is now two HOF ballots away from being ineligible for election to the Hall by the Baseball Writers Association of America.  If he's not on the 2005 ballot, any future eligibility (should he be ultimately reinstated) is kicked to the notoriously capricious and rather cranky revised Veteran's Committee of the Hall, now made up of living HOF members, which only meets every couple of years.  So time's a wastin'.

Pete evidently wants to be in the Hall as badly as he wants anything in life.  Rose has reportedly been told repeatedly that to have any chance of having his permanent ban from baseball lifted (how do you lift a "permanent ban" anyway?) he has to fess up to betting on baseball.  Pete has been denying that he ever bet on baseball for 14 years.  Repeatedly, consistently denied it.  More times than I can count.  But now he's admitting it.

Huh?  What happened?  Why now?  

Oh yeah...the eligibility thing.  The sand's running out of the hourglass.

I don't know if it comes up in the full ABC interview (or the book) or not--it certainly wasn't in the excerpt of the Gibson interview--but I can't help but wonder if the "if this is all true that you bet on baseball--including Reds--games, why did you lie about it for the past 14 years?" question is directly addressed.  It's kind of the topical version of the old TV courtroom drama query when a witness provides testimony contrary to something he/she had stated previously:  were you lying then or are you lying now?

Alright, so all of this is obviously extremely self-serving.  And Rose appears, not surprisingly perhaps, essentially utterly devoid of contrition about all of it.  In the interview that I saw on Monday, Rose said that he was "sorry this ever happened."  But what he didn't say was that he was sorry that he had bet on baseball.  He didn't say that betting on baseball was wrong; he didn't say why it was wrong.  He just said that he was "sorry this ever happened."  One cannot help but arrive at the conclusion that the "this" in Rose's statement referred to his being nabbed and everyone making such a big deal out if happened.  He was sorry that he got caught, one must conclude, and sorry that everyone's made such a stink about the whole thing.  I have never, ever heard Rose say that what he did was wrong.  Even now, that he has admitted having done it, he hasn't (as far as I know) said that his actions were mistaken.

All of that is bad enough.  But the way this "admission" has been handled really takes the proverbial cake, bakes it, ices it, and ingests it in one big gulp.

Rose's admission, as I mentioned above, has been codified, so to speak, in a book.  This book will sell for $24.95 at a bookshop near you.  Rose's publisher has reportedly produced a first print run of 500,000 copies, a truly breathtaking number.  If they all sell (and the publisher is obviously counting on it), the gross take will be $12.475 million.  Why the heck not admit to something you've been denying for 14 years if you can put that kind of a price tag on it?

In what has to be the grand prize winner of the bad timing award, please note that the book announcement, and the exclusive interview (part of which has already been shown, as I indicated above) have both mysteriously surfaced at the beginning of the same week that the 2004 Hall of Fame class will be announced.  Which announcement do you think will garner more attention, Rose's admission or the new members of Baseball's Hall of Fame?  Which should garner more attention?

Obviously, Pete Rose doesn't get it.  He's never going to get it.  Should that matter in terms of his potential enshrinement?  Should it matter if Reds owner Carl Lindner really does want to bring Rose back as the club's manager, as is rumored?  

Make up your own mind about that.  If you want to know my position on all of this, let me put it this way:  I'm in favor of whatever action minimizes the notoriety of Rose and his relationship to baseball.  We've wasted more than enough time and energy on this guy already.

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