PETE ROSE should resign himself to the reality of the moment. The more days pass, the longer he lingers in the spotlight, the less likely it seems he will live to be invited inside Cooperstown’s sanctified walls. Rose badly miscalculated the momentum his new book, and his fresh interpretations of the truth, would generate. He’s galvanized the people, all right, on the issue of the Hall of Fame.
To switch the locks on the front door.
“You have to live with the cards that are dealt to you,” Rose said yesterday, sitting inside room 1154 at the Essex House, peddling his story with the same vigor he used to break up double plays. “This book didn’t come out right now to try and persuade Bud Selig to reinstate me.”
That book, “My Prison Without Bars,” was prominently displayed throughout room 1154. Outside, traffic inched along Central Park South, people steeling themselves against the awful January chill. Inside, Rose was doing the same thing, arming himself against a backlash that has been quick, decisive and loud.
“This is a good forum to hear from the fans,” Rose said.
Only it hasn’t gone entirely as Rose had hoped. There is little question Rose wanted to get his confession on the record now, while he could still have two last cracks at earning admission to the Hall via the Baseball Writers Association of America. Some of us still believe he belongs in the Hall, because in a game fueled by numbers, the man who amassed more base hits than anyone in history needs to be in there.
More and more, that sounds like a minority opinion. I don’t think that’s right. But what’s right isn’t in play here. It’s what’s real. And if the writers aren’t going to vote Rose in, you can bet the old-timers who comprise the veterans committee will all but lock arms and form a human blockade around the gates.
It would behoove Rose to accept all of this, and do something about it. Perhaps it’s a little less glamorous to live out your days with the title of “The Guy They Made An Example Of,” instead of “Hall of Famer,” but that certainly seems to be where the game’s all-time hit king is headed.
If his example prevents others from following the same path? Then maybe his baseball soul really is redeemable after all.
“I’m not trying to justify what I did because I was wrong,” Rose said. “I wish I would have paid greater attention to what happened to Paul Hornung, who’s a good friend of mine [and who, along with Alex Karras, was suspended for the entire 1963 NFL season when they were discovered to have bet on NFL games]. Maybe that was the problem, that they only got a year’s suspension.”
Rose shuffled his feet, covered by black-and-white sneakers with “Zoom Turbines” stenciled along the tongue.
“Hopefully,” he said, “people will understand how big the mistake was that I made. Maybe they won’t go down that same path.”
Maybe that’ll be enough to stop wondering whether Rose is just working another con. The worst thing Rose could do to his reputation is get back in the game, and sit inside the Reds manager’s office again. Every second he’s on the job, people will wonder. Every move. Every strategy. Every pinch hitter. You think people resent Rose now? Wait until then.
Pete Rose has to bow out of this unseemly public self-flogging. He has to go away.
“I think America is a forgiving country,” he said, and he’s right.
Eventually. But eventually can be an awful long time.
Longer, probably, than Pete Rose is ready to wait.