Columnist Dean Juipe: Still refusing to come clean, Rose deserves extended exile

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2004 | 10:13 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

It's a book and an appeal designed as a confession, but it turns out Pete Rose still has his hands behind his back and his fingers crossed. He's still posturing.

He's still not coming clean.

He's still lying, still trying to extract money from a gullible public, still hoping to place himself and his betting track record in the best possible light.

Don't buy it. Don't buy the book, "My Prison Without Bars" when it is released Thursday and don't buy Rose's spiel that he has told all there is to tell in this his second, supposedly detailed and truthful, autobiography.

Thomas Gioiosa isn't falling for this version of Rose's story and he should know, having placed many a baseball bet for the Cincinnati Reds' manager during his years as Rose's intermediary bookie.

Gioiosa, who once shared a home with Rose, disputes a key item in this latest version of Rose's sordid past. While Petulant Pete maintains he never placed a bet from the Reds' clubhouse -- "I never bet against my own team and I never made any bets from the clubhouse," he's quoted as saying -- Gioiosa knows better.

"I was there, and we did it (bet from the clubhouse) every day," he told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

It's a key point of contention in that Rose, in this latest book and round of interviews as he attempts to wiggle his way back into Major League Baseball's good graces and its Hall of Fame, supposedly holds nothing back while pocketing a $500,000 advance for the book and gaining sympathy and support from his hard-to-deter fans.

He sees himself as on a crusade.

I still see him as the despicable, egotistical liar he seemingly has been for all or much of his adult life.

Forget the stats from the ball field, Rose has no business being in the Hall of Fame. He violated the one and only rule that is posted in plain view in every MLB clubhouse: "No Betting Allowed."

In addition, the basic criteria for Hall of Fame eligibility would seem to exclude Rose no matter how many appeals or stories he concocts to explain the documented 412 bets he placed on baseball games between 1985 and '87. "Voting (for the Hall of Fame) shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played," reads the Hall's bylaw on eligibility.

Rose had abilities and holds a few chosen records, but he also has zero integrity and a couple of severe character flaws. By definition, he has permanently removed himself from Hall of Fame consideration by the letter of the law.

If the commissioner of baseball and the Baseball Writers' Association of America think otherwise, Rose could find himself on the 2005 Hall of Fame ballot. But I don't think either Bud Selig or the writers are going to fall for this latest Rose-concocted scheme.

After all, Rose flat out lied about betting on baseball not only in his first autobiography -- which can now be considered worthless -- but in face-to-face inquiries with two MLB commissioners and an investigator assigned to look into the charges that Rose had bet on ball games. In both a 1989 meeting with then-commissioner Peter Ueberroth and a 2002 meeting with Selig, Rose maintained a certain degree of innocence.

He says now that he wasn't quite forthright with Ueberroth or Selig or John Dowd, the MLB investigator who compiled a litany of offenses that led to Rose receiving a lifetime ban from the sport in 1989.

Rose says this time he is telling the truth, that he did bet on baseball but that he wouldn't do it from the clubhouse and that his bets didn't influence his managerial strategies. But given that Gioiosa has already stepped forward to dispute Rose's most pivotal claim, anything else Rose has to say is subject to a wary eye as well.

It's not the least bit difficult to imagine situations in which Rose's managerial moves were influenced by his betting choices any given day. For instance, if he didn't bet on today's game but planned to bet on tomorrow's, it might play into whether he used the Reds' top reliever today or held him back for use tomorrow.

The fact that Dowd uncovered no fewer than 52 occasions in which Rose bet on the Reds, it's hardly a stretch to think his wallet might have affected his personnel decisions.

I just don't like Rose for what he did to baseball and I'll never be among those who forgive him. For 14 years he denied betting on baseball even though it was obvious he had, and only now that a publisher has thrown a handsome advance at him does he see fit to admit to a portion of his offenses (much to the chagrin of his first biographer, Roger Kahn, it must be added).

The man was a great ballplayer but he can't be trusted. And even if he was telling the truth today, his past so overwhelmingly besmirches his image and the realness of who he is that it cannot be erased.

If this new book and the interviews he is giving to promote it are intended to be a confession, it's one that's incomplete and therefore largely irrelevant. There are still a few sins, sins of omission if nothing else, that he has, to date, failed to mention.

He still has some repenting to do, no matter how sorry his story or how difficult his exile.

The situation remains unchanged to my way of thinking: Rose can buy a ticket to the Hall of Fame like anyone else.