Worse Than We Knew

by Bob Bryant - January 13, 2004

It was proposed here last week that if Pete would have ever gone to MLB with his problem, they would have taken the best of care to preserve the dignity and status of one of the game's greats.

As it turned out, baseball showed a willingness to go far beyond this, bending over backwards until they almost fell over.

John Dowd prefers not to talk about the Pete Rose investigation, and understandably so. He's undergone more scrutiny, endured more sling and arrows, and been maligned for this case far more than he has any other taken on in his colorful and occasionally controversial career mostly spent hunting down gangsters and white-collar criminals.

But speak he has, however reluctantly, and what a set of admissions.

First, Dowd said that Bart Giamatti instructed him that this would have to be the fairest of investigations, with no chance of accusation. (Rose and his apologists managed to do so, anyway.) He was to turn every week's findings over to Rose's attorneys during the course of the investigation.

After the dossier was complete, and the sordid picture crystal clear, Giamatti told Dowd to offer Rose the sweetest of sweetheart deals: Admit to gambling on baseball, accept temporary dismissal from the game, undergo a rigorously supervised rehabilitation, and eventually be reinstated.

In addition, Dowd also elicited a promise from the Cincinnati U.S. Attorney's office to agree not to prosecute Rose on tax evasion charges if he accepted baseball's offer and paid his taxes with interest and penalties.

You may or may not recall that Rose not only rejected the offer, he sued the Commissioner's office, and lost.

Later, he was convicted of tax evasion and served five months in federal prison.

Dowd recalls a secretly held deposition in the cafeteria of a convent in Dayton, at which Rose denied everything. "He was clearly in denial, like an alcoholic." That meant he couldn't accept the generous terms offered him because they included receiving treatment for, and giving up, his addictive behavior.

Whether or not Pete Rose ever gets a plaque in Cooperstown is basically immaterial. I don't think he should, because "lifetime ban", to me, means something. Or at least it should. Rose simply went past one of the few boundaries set up for the game; to me, it's that simple.

Perhaps as someone who has struggled with behavioral issues for a good portion of his life, I should be more sympathetic. And I am, to those who can finally admit the depth of their outward and inward deceptions, and seek help, and are genuinely contrite for their bad behavior, no matter what its original source. Pete Rose reminds me all too much of a close relative, who wants back in to everyone's lives without a real acknowledgement of what they have done after incredibly bad behavior, and without any real attempt at dealing with the issues at hand. How can one offer the serpent a place of honor at the table, when his only real wish is to strike again?

Pete Rose is sad, a weak, pathetic character who represents the darkest of addictive behaviors. He's so far gone, he's still striking out at the very ones who tried to save him, and is so self-absorbed, he genuinely cannot understand why people aren't forgiving him, despite the lies, the disgrace he brought upon himself, the Reds, and baseball, and the damage he has attempted to do to others in the name of saving his own hide.

He's a disaster still waiting to happen.