Just yesterday I picked up a copy of Game of Shadows, the expose by investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams on Barry Bonds, BALCO and the unseemly side of baseball. Though the book is incredibly researched and full of the minutest detail, my fear is that Game of Shadows only scratches the surface. Beneath lurks, perhaps, depths of ugliness, greed and cheating that is sure to be unfathomable.
I’m afraid (and I’m just basing this on hunches) the underbelly of baseball is like a Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum pulp novel. Coincidentally, Clancy owns a stake in the Baltimore Orioles. Go figure.
But in rifling through the opening chapters yesterday, I couldn’t help but think about baseball’s last major scandal, which just yesterday took a new fork in its ever-winding twists and turns in a plot that would be perfect fodder for a bad made-for-TV movie. In comparison to the steroids and HGH revelations that could knock out the punch-drunk fans, the Pete Rose scandal seems quaint. With that dirty scandal there was simply cheating, a bad cover-up and a few jail sentences that resulted in Rose essentially admitting that the investigation headed by John Dowd was correct.
Well, the investigation was sort of correct. Dowd, the civil and criminal litigator who not only is a Washington insider, but also served as Special Counsel to the Commissioner of Baseball in the investigations of Rose, George Steinbrenner, Don Zimmer and Lenny Dykstra, seems to have undershot with Rose. According to the Dowd Report, Rose bet on baseball regularly – including the Reds, the team he managed – which is a direct violation of baseball’s “Golden Rule.” But according to Rose, as revealed on ESPN radio with hosts Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann, Dowd got it wrong. Rose just didn’t bet on his Reds regularly, he bet on the Reds all the time.
“I bet on my team every night. I didn't bet on my team four nights a week," Rose said during the interview with Patrick and Olbermann. “I bet on my team to win every night because I love my team, I believe in my team. I did everything in my power every night to win that game.”
That certainly is a lot different than reportedly admitting that you thought the steroid you were rubbing on your legs was flax seed oil. Who would have guessed that it was “The Cream” or “The Clear?”
Nevertheless, Pete Rose is approaching his 18th year of banishment from baseball. He also will turn 66 in a few weeks so it goes without saying that time is getting short for the so-called “Hit King” to lobby for his reinstatement to the game he says he loves so much yet still decided to treat like it owed him something. Now I don’t doubt that Rose is contrite in his repeated mea culpas, including the one that was released as a book from publisher Rodale. And I’m not going to debate whether or not Rose is sincere in apologizing for staining his game.
However, it’s so transparent that Rose wants something from baseball.
Again.
Whether or not he has properly paid for his crime and made his penance is not really for me to say, though if anyone would have asked me a few years ago I would have said that the lifetime ban was sufficient. I will say, though, that I don’t know if Rose realizes that baseball owes him nothing. Nada. Zilch. Baseball doesn’t need Pete Rose, despite what he says. In fact, baseball never needed Pete Rose. Like any art form, baseball will always exist. There will always be games whether they are in some small park in any corner of the country or at Yankee Stadium. There could be two people watching or 70,000 – it doesn’t matter. The game doesn’t exist in a vacuum and no one owns it despite what Major League Baseball leads people to believe.
To play or watch the game is a reward within itself and those who give it the proper respect and treat it with humility get to have it for life. Someone like John Vukovich got that. It doesn’t seem as if Rose ever will.
Pete Rose, it seems, had the world in the palm of his hand and spit in its face.
Worse, as Game of Shadows indicates, he wasn’t the only one.
More: Pete Rose on ESPN Radio with Olbermann and Patrick
More: The Dowd Report
More: In defense of Pete Rose
More: Pete Rose book tour hits Philadelphia (2004)