The Return of Pete Rose(Exclusive--He's Back in Baseball in 2004)

baseball prospectus ^ | Aug. 12, 2003 | Derek Zumsteg and Will Carroll

[Ray Kinsella]

Pete Rose and Major League Baseball have reached an agreement that would allow him to return to baseball in 2004, and includes no admission of wrongdoing by Rose, Baseball Prospectus has learned. According to several sources, Rose signed the agreement after a series of pre-season meetings between Rose, Hall of Fame member Mike Schmidt, and at different times, high-level representatives of Major League Baseball, including Bob DuPuy, Major League Baseball's Chief Operating Officer, and Allan H. "Bud" Selig, Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

The agreement includes removal of Rose from baseball's permanently ineligible list. This would allow Rose to appear on ballots for baseball's Hall of Fame, which bars such banned players from consideration. The agreement allows Rose to be employed by a team in the 2004 season, as long as that position does not involve the day to day operations. That employment restriction would be removed after a year, allowing Rose to return to managing a team as early as the 2005 season if a position is offered to him.

In December, several publications reported that Rose and Bud Selig met in Milwaukee last winter, and that lawyers for both sides were exchanging proposals to end Rose's lifetime ban from baseball. Jayson Stark of ESPN wrote in a column August 7th that Reds owner Carl Lindner intends to hire Rose as the team's manager and has agitated for Rose's reinstatement for some time.

Pete Rose has been banned from baseball since he reached an agreement with then-Commissioner Bart Giamatti that included a lifetime ban from baseball for conduct detrimental to the sport, but which did not include an admission that Rose gambled on baseball. The August 23, 1989 agreement ended the investigation by baseball, led by John Dowd. Dowd's findings are published at www.dowdreport.com. Dowd concluded that Rose had bet on games he was involved in, citing such evidence as telephone records including calls to a bookie from the Reds clubhouse, bank records of large payments, and betting notes that handwriting experts identified as Rose's, which matched records of bookie Ron Peters. Baseball Prospectus has published several articles on the continuing controversy over Rose, including a lengthy evaluation of baseball historian and Boston Red Sox analyst Bill James's criticisms of the Dowd Report. Rose has always denied that he has bet on baseball.

The agreement would secure a place on the Hall of Fame ballot for Rose as his eligibility window closes. Rose played his last season in 1986, and Hall of Fame eligibility rules require that a player appear within 20 years of the end of their playing career. There would be significant barriers to Rose appearing on the 2004 ballot, which would leave only one year of eligibility for election by voters at large. If Rose failed to be elected by a vote, he would have to be selected by the Veterans' Committee.

[Recovering_Democrat]

Rose bet on the game. He should not be getting special treatment.

[Moleman]

Rose is a womanizing,gambling junkie,drunk.
And also has more base hits than Ty Cobb- regardless he belongs in the Hall of Fame.

[Conservative til I die]

How much do you want to bet Pete Rose is still gambling?

[onedoug]

Swell example for kids, alright.

[kinghorse]

MLB put out a statement minutes after this report was issued denying the validity of every aspect of this report. Pete Rose will not be allowed back into Baseball until he apologizes. If he's too proud to apologize, he'll die without baseball IMHO. What an ass to be so bullheaded. But would we have expected anything different from this ass. Great ball player, pathetic human being.

[Conservative til I die]

I think what he is saying is that it's suspicious when he's only betting FOR his team in some games, the implication being that the other games he was betting AGAINST his team.

[Conservative til I die]

I think what he is saying is that it's suspicious when he's only betting FOR his team in some games, the implication being that the other games he was betting AGAINST his team.

[bedolido]

sad... I didn't know he hadn't apologized. He needs to apologize to baseball, the fans and the commision.

[IronJack]

great man ...

Hardly. Great men don't do what he did.

[Conservative til I die]

Are you trying to turn this into an anti-gay rant?

[Chancellor Palpatine]

I guarantee he's still gambling. I'm not sure what I think about this yet.

[bedolido]

great man ...
Hardly. Great men don't do what he did.

great man with a major fault. still a great player... no one here can argue that point.

btw: I still hope he makes it into the HOF someday. not too many players will reach that greatness and he did it in our (my) lifetime.

[TBP]

I've read Bill James's article on the Dowd Report and he shows that the "evidence" is mostly interpretation. What he suggests may have happened is that Rose lied about betting on other sports and therefore Dowd chose to believe the most anti-Rose interpretation of everything, even if it meant believing admitted bookies and drug dealers.

The so-called betting slip includes a combination of games that was not played at any point in the NL season in quesiton. A handwriting expert said it was in Rose's handwriting, but a handwriting expert also said that the Hitler Diaries were genuine.

Whet they should have done is to do what the newsletter Strategic Investment did on the Foster "suicide note": They got 3 police handwriting experts, one in New York, one in LA, and one in Boston, each working independently and without knowledge of the others. (BTW, they all concluded that the suicide note was NOT in Foster's handwriting.)

Then there was a string of phone calls from Rose's home phone to a bookie in New York from about 7 to about 11 on a night when the Reds were playing. The calls were placed by Rose's friend Paul Janszen. According to Janszen's girlfriend, when Rose got home, he and Janszen had a shouting match and Janszen and his girlfriend stormed out. Now interestingly, about 12 midnight a string of calls to the same bookie starts from Janszen's home phone.

Could these have been Rose's bets? They could have, but they could just as easily have been Janszen's own bets.

James's theory is that Janszen, Ron Peters, and others ran out of credit with their bookies, so they started laying bets using the name of their famous friend Pete Rose because he would never be denied credit by the bookies.

Maybe, maybe not. But there is certainly room for reasonable doubt as to whether Rose bet on baseball.

Now, I have family in Cincinnati and I have seen Pete Rose in commercials when he was playing. Unless he's had some acting lessons, he is a TERRIBLE actor. And yet he has maintained over these years that "I did not bet on baseball and I did not bet on the Cincinnati Reds." And he has done so with reasonable plausibility. Can a bad actor do this if it was not true? And why (if Baseball Prospectus, which is a very respected site, is correct) didn't baseball insist on and get a confession to betting on baseball? Does baseball know that there is plenty of room for doubt on this case?

Had I been commissioner, I would have sat Rose down for two years, one for consorting with gamblers (one year, Durocher precedent) and one for his betting on other sports. Then I would have had a more thorough, perhaps separate investigation done on the charge of betting on baseball.

[Robert_Paulson2]

so he gambled on the game... or did not.
big deal. so has "conservative christian icon" former scty bennett...

Good luck petey.
hope somebody even lets you do a temporary roster or two, just so you can swing that bat one more time... before settling into a long and successful coaching career.

Bet he can still cream a 98 mph fastball...

[Finalapproach29er]

That's how liberals count. 15 years=life

I say we should release Sirhan Sirhan after his "life" sentence. Put him on a plane for Boston and see how the left likes the justice system. Hinckley walks the streets on weekends after his "life" sentence in the Psych. ward.

Selig is undoubtedly a liberal.

[TBP]

Selig is undoubtedly a liberal.

Well, his best friend (since childhood) is Herb Kohl, the liberal Democrat Senator from Wisconsin.

[Mr. Lucky]

Are you trying to turn this into an anti-gay rant?

I wouldn't forgive myself had I let the opportunity pass.

[Michael.SF.]

If they're less aggressive today, then perhaps that explains why fewer people watch.

There is a big difference between "being aggressive" and purposefully clobbering a guy in an exhibition game.

Would you also say that Daryl Stingly was also just "agressive"?

[Calvin Locke]

And Shoeless Joe didn't contribute to the death of a baseball commissioner.

(my ex-father-in-law was/is a big Yalie, and knew Bart).

[MattGarrett]

OH PUHLEASE!