PETE ROSE writes that baseball had only a lifetime punishment for gambling, no “fancy treatment” like for drugs and alcohol, virtually forcing him to stonewall his problem.
So now we are supposed to believe he was crying out for help, as if we can believe anything Rose says now that, for the sake of his reinstatement and pocketbook, he has come clean from a 14-year lie.
“If a player is [under the influence] during a game, rather than on his own time, it could affect the integrity of the game, too,” Paul Molitor said. “But when you are the manager and betting on baseball, people have to wonder why decisions are made.
“The only rule everyone is read every spring training is on gambling and how the ban is possibly lifetime. Unfortunately, some of the rules and regulations in other areas aren’t as specific. Who’s to say what’s worse?”
For the purposes of baseball, gambling is by far, never mind that all three cause equally devastating personal tragedies. If the game is viewed to have no integrity, there is no game and, in the end, no disgraced all-time Hit King mixing apples and oranges with sour grapes and still not nearly enough regret.
The best way back to the game is to lay lower than the life he has lived, but that has become Rose’s second wrong fork taken, the first contrasted by the two newest members of the club excluding him.
“Why didn’t he get help?” asked Dennis Eckersley, at mid-career an alcohol rehab patient and now, like Molitor, a first-ballot Hall of Famer. “Problem is, you have to admit it.”
If, logically, baseball cannot sponsor Gamblers Anonymous, Rose could have found help on his own, like Molitor did for a cocaine problem he suffered as long ago as Rose’s disgrace by now could have become. Rose’s denial, partially interrupted for staging reasons, continues to deny him the place in Cooperstown his accomplishments obviously earned.
Both Molitor and Eckersley will vote for Rose as members of the veteran’s committee, if it comes to that, as it might, if Molitor’s former Brewers boss and still good friend, Bud Selig, opts for reinstatement.
“The hard thing is, Bud is conscious of the pulse of the fans and the outcry supports Pete,” Molitor said. “Fans wanting something to happen doesn’t mean it’s right, but if he’s [allowed] back, then I don’t have to worry about the moral aspect of it.”
Said Eckersley, “He’s a Hall of Famer, no-brainer. I don’t get into judging people. All you can say is it’s late to admit it, taking away from the forgiveness.
“We’ve all got to forgive sometime, but it’s bad timing, just not right. Not real classy, but maybe that’s Pete Rose.”
The rain on Molitor’s and Eckersley’s parade is acid rain, but they were beaming on the dais yesterday like sunbeams, so let no one believe it was a day spoiled.
“All this does is reinforce how grateful I am to be sober,” Eckersley said.
Molitor said he was speaking only for himself, and he did as a ship sailing, leaving Rose a lonely, pathetic figure on the dock.
“Everyone battles things at some point, some bigger than others, but we have a choice how we deal with them,” Molitor said. “Dabbling into the drug party scene is hard for me to imagine sometimes. It was 25 years ago.
“But it was real and could have cut short my career if I didn’t get a grip on it. You learn and find positives in it, like maybe helping other people. It makes you appreciate things that are good.”
On further reflection, Pete Rose’s timing couldn’t have been better.