Pete Rose

I vote in Baseball Hall of Fame balloting and have for more than 20 years. Up until yesterday, I was willing to vote for Pete Rose -- even though he wasn't eligible and never has been -- because for the last 14 years I believed him when he said he never bet on his team while he managed the Cincinnati Reds in the 1980s. Now Rose admits in his latest autobiography that he did indeed bet on his own team. That clinches it for me. The genie is out of the bottle.

Our credulity is being bowled over at home plate. Our intelligence is being dragged across the dirt on its belly. You see what's happening, right? We're being Charlie Hustled. In finally admitting this week that he'd bet on the Cincinnati Reds while managing them, Pete Rose wants us to think he is sorry. He's not sorry, he's greedy. In trying to make up for 4,256 lies, Rose wants us to think he is pleading for admittance into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The 14-year saga of the Pete Rose gambling story had no higher-profile moment than the Jim Gray interview. Gray, a veteran network broadcaster, was working as an on-field reporter for NBC at the 1999 World Series in Atlanta. Before Game 2, a ceremony was held honoring an All-Century team, sponsored by MasterCard.

Baseball is an arcane institution filled with the infield fly rule, suicide bunts and other rituals and customs. So it takes some study to determine why, 14 years after being tossed out of professional baseball for gambling on the outcome of games, Pete Rose finally has admitted what everyone knows he did. First, Rose's autobiography is about to be released, and there's no such thing as a bad interview for book sales.

So, Pete Rose is sweeping aside 14 years of lies and admitting to what has always been suspected and what the investigation by John Dowd concluded: He repeatedly bet on baseball while serving as manager of the Cincinnati Reds, violating one of the industry's most important rules and resulting in his lifetime ban. So, why now? Why would the man known as Charlie Hustle decide to put an end to what has clearly been a 14-year hustle? What to make of this?

So how did Rodale Inc., a family-owned publisher in Emmaus, Pa., with headquarters on a 60-acre organic farm, land what could be one of the most buzzed-about books of the year, Pete Rose's memoir, "My Prison Without Bars"? After a heated bidding war last year, Rodale won the rights to Rose's book, in which, according to much media speculation, the baseball legend admits that he bet on baseball games while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds.

For more than a decade, Pete Rose insisted that the investigator whose report painted him as a baseball gambler was wrong. If ever John Dowd wanted to say "I told you so," Monday was his chance. But as news broke that Rose had admitted to betting on baseball, a secretary at Dowd's law firm in Washington said he was traveling and unavailable for comment. It was left to Fay Vincent, Dowd's friend and former baseball commissioner, to speak for him.

The voice on the phone was friendly but determined. A baseball writer, and a good one, was talking. "Do you feel betrayed?" he asked as I groped about for alertness The night before, I had seen the thrilling Broadway production of "Henry IV," and I thought, "Betrayed? Wait a minute. That's what Prince Hal does to his drinking buddy, Falstaff, when, after ascending the throne, he says 'I know thee not, old man. How ill white hairs become the fool and jester.'

As tidbits of Pete Rose's soon-to-be-released autobiography percolated across the country Monday, his admission of gambling on baseball got a split reception from players, managers and media members: Some thought it sincere. Others said it was a ploy by a man desperate for reinstatement into the game's good graces. But even if baseball lifts itslifetime ban on its career hits leader, several of Rose's peers said that he should not be allowed to return as a manager or coach.

Pete Rose has publicly admitted for the first time he bet on baseball games in which he managed, according to book excerpts released Monday, reversing himself after more than a decade of denying he gambled on his sport. By confessing that he committed perhaps the game's ultimate sin, the baseball legend seeks an end to his exile from the sport, including renewed consideration for enshrinement in its Hall of Fame.