Pete Rose: I Bet On Reds "Every Night"
Pete Rose told ESPN Wednesday that he bet on the Reds "every night" while he was manager of the team in the late 1980s.
"I bet on my team every night," he told ESPN's Dan Patrick. "I didn't bet on my team four nights a week. I was wrong."
The confession wasn't Rose's first, reports CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian. In his autobiography, published in 2004, Rose revealed that he wagered many times a week while managing. Today, he admitted his gambling addiction was daily.
In 1989, Rose, baseball's all-time hit leader, accepted a lifetime ban from baseball for gambling, only to spend the next 15 years heatedly denying — at every opportunity — he bet on game he played with equal passion.
While much of his memorabilia has found its way into baseball's Hall of Fame, Rose remains on the outside, looking in — ineligible for induction into Cooperstown or any activities involving the game, adds Keteyian.
Wednesday's revelation of nightly wagering comes after Rose said his fans would likely be "elated" if Major League Baseball reinstated him after his 18 years of exile.
"Everything should be for the fans," Rose said Tuesday before a preview party celebrating Saturday's opening of a special exhibit in his honor at the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame. "If they retired my number here, don't you think the fans would be elated?
"They could send a hit man after me, and I would still be out there trying to sell baseball. My name's synonymous with baseball."
Several Rose-related artifacts have been on display at the Reds Hall of Fame since it debuted in 2004, a year after Great American Ball Park opened. The new exhibit includes more that 300 items from the career of Rose, who finished playing in 1986 with an all-time high 4,256 hits. His total is reflected at the Reds' Hall in a three-story high wall of baseballs — one for each hit.
"I'm just happy having three stories of balls. That's a lot of balls," said Rose, who spent almost three more seasons as Cincinnati's manager before the league banned him in 1989 for betting on baseball.
Displayed at the news conference were the bat Rose used and the ball he hit when he stroked hit 4,192 to pass Ty Cobb and set the career hit record.
"You want to check and make sure there's no cork in that bat?" he joked.
Because of the ban, Rose is not allowed to be involved in most on-field activities, which has prevented the Reds from retiring his uniform No. 14. MLB did include him in two events — 1999's All-Century Team and 2002's 30 Memorable Moments — that were sponsored by a credit card company. He couldn't say whether he thought the current exhibit represented a softening of baseball's stance regarding his ban.
"I want to thank baseball for giving the permission to do this," he said about the exhibit. "They wouldn't let me be on the field for the last game here (at Cinergy Field, the Reds' previous home). They wouldn't let me go to the last game in Philadelphia (at Veterans Stadium) either."