Outside the Lines: Pete Rose Bet on Baseball as a Player

Pete Rose has quietly tried to work his way back into the good graces of baseball in recent years, despite his lifetime ban tied to alleged gambling while manager of the Reds in 1989. Rose eventually admitted he bet on baseball back in 2004, but said it was only when he was a manager.

A new report by Outside the Lines contradicts this. OTL acquired notebooks detailing Rose’s alleged gambling during a period in 1986 when he was still playing. The notebooks are detailed and show Rose, at one point, losing close to $25,000 betting on basketball as well as betting on the Reds and other baseball games.

"The documents are copies of pages from a notebook seized from the home of former Rose associate Michael Bertolini during a raid by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in October 1989, nearly two months after Rose was declared permanently ineligible by Major League Baseball. Their authenticity has been verified by two people who took part in the raid, which was part of a mail fraud investigation and unrelated to gambling. For 26 years, the notebook has remained under court-ordered seal and is currently stored in the National Archives’ New York office, where officials have declined requests to release it publicly."

This news probably isn’t that much of a shock or likely to change your impression of Rose. Pete Rose being less than truthful about something probably falls within the “be-still my beating heart” qualifier.

Interestingly, Rose applied for reinstatement earlier this year. The All-Star Game takes place next month in Cincinnati, his baseball home. Will the OTL report force MLB to change its position?  Another interesting subtext is that Rose returned to television as an analyst with ESPN’s competitor Fox Sports 1 this May. The announcement of his hiring at Fox Sports coincided with the timing of a Rose interview with Michael Kay, which is cited within the OTL report. It’s doubtful on whether this will have any impact on his Fox Sports 1 status, as it’s not like the questions about his truth-telling in regard to gambling on baseball are new.