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Pete Rose: Overshadowing Hall unintended
Pete Rose insists he didn't plan to draw attention away from the elections of Dennis Eckersley and Paul Molitor to baseball's Hall of Fame.
Rose's admission in his autobiography that he bet on baseball has been making news for more than a week, upsetting the Hall of Fame, which announced Tuesday that Eckersley and Molitor were its latest inductees.
"I never intended to diminish the exciting news for these deserving players," Rose said in a statement Wednesday.
Eckersley and Molitor criticized Rose for bad timing.
"It's a little disappointing in the timing because we can all see the attention it's getting," Molitor said. "I answered questions for an hour yesterday but the only one that was used on the front page of USA Today was about Pete Rose."
Rose's publisher, Rodale Inc., originally announced last year that the book would be released in March 2004 but moved up the date to Jan. 8 -- two days after the announcement of this year's Hall election results.
Sports Illustrated, which Rodale said bought first serialization rights for the issue hitting newsstands Wednesday, put excerpts on its Web site Monday. The Associated Press wrote its own story Monday about Rose's admission based on the excerpts released by Sports Illustrated.
ESPN.com obtained a copy of the book and reviewed it for a story published Tuesday. The review included passages from "Pete Rose: My Prison without Bars".
"My publisher worked hard to contain the news of this book until after the Hall of Fame announcements, and we were both upset when a media leak on Sunday caused the news to be announced on Monday," Rose said.
However, Sports Illustrated says it released the excerpts only after consultation with Rodale. Originally, the magazine planned to publish the excerpts on Wednesday but moved up the date because details of the book were starting to get out.
"Sports Illustrated and Rodale mutually agreed on Sunday to release the excerpts on Monday morning," said Rick McCabe, a spokesman for the magazine.
Hall chairman Jane Forbes Clark was disappointed the book was released this week.
"I think the timing was very unfortunate," she said Wednesday after the Hall's news conference for Eckersley and Molitor. "It's unfortunate because this should be their day."
Only about half of the 157 Hall voters surveyed by Tribune Co. newspapers said they would vote for Rose if he became eligible, well short of the 75 percent necessary for election. Seventy-one writers said they would vote for Rose, 75 said they wouldn't and 11 said they were undecided. There were 506 Hall voters this year.
Rose admits in the book, "Pete Rose: My Prison without Bars," that he placed bets on the Cincinnati Reds during the time he managed the team in the late 1980s.
He repeated those admissions in a Dec. 12 interview with ABC News' "Primetime Thursday," parts of which aired for the first time Monday on "Good Morning America."
"I am terribly sorry for my actions and for my bad judgment in ever wagering on baseball, and I deeply regret waiting so many years to come clean," Rose said in his statement. "I would like to apologize to the fans for abusing their trust, but I thank them all for their continuing faith in me."
Rose accepted a permanent ban from baseball in August 1989 and applied to commissioner Bud Selig for reinstatement in 1997. In November 2002, he met with Selig and admitted betting on baseball.
"I hoped that the public admission, coordinated with my hopeful reinstatement back into baseball, would have taken place shortly thereafter," Rose said. "It was always my intent for the book to follow a public admission coordinated with baseball."
Molitor remembered his own problems with drugs and compared his situation to that of Rose.
"My involvement and choice to experiment with drugs early in my career is something that I regret," Molitor said. "To be contrite you first have to acknowledge that what you did was wrong, but I'm not sure that Pete has done that."
What Rose intended for his public confession has gone terribly awry, former teammate Mike Schmidt said.
"It doesn't look good, it's taken a turn for the worse," he told the AP. "It is a sad thing. ... I haven't heard anything good, but I hope the commissioner is reserving judgment. I've heard some of the worst references about Pete."
John Dowd, the investigator who compiled the report for baseball that led to Rose's ban, would not comment on Rose's turnabout, which followed 14 years of denials by the career hits leader.
"I really don't want to get into a Dowd vs. Rose," Dowd said Wednesday.
Also in the book, Rose writes he has had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Behavior, which he says he got from his mother, and the book contains several quotes from a doctor about the effects. He repeats that he still loves to gamble legally at racetracks, and describes himself as "grumpy, short-tempered and cold-hearted."
He also talks about the emotional moment when he faced his family before going to prison and "humiliating body searches" in prison. He recounts anecdotes of his career such as taking an umpire to dinner after he was ejected from a game and makes a few puerile jokes.
He also compares his compulsive gambling to the behavior of former President Clinton, actors Robert Downey Jr. and Winona Ryder, and blames former Reds manager Jack McKeon and general manager Jim Bowden for not giving Pete Rose Jr. enough of a chance when he played for Cincinnati in 1997.
Source: ESPN
Rose's admission in his autobiography that he bet on baseball has been making news for more than a week, upsetting the Hall of Fame, which announced Tuesday that Eckersley and Molitor were its latest inductees.
"I never intended to diminish the exciting news for these deserving players," Rose said in a statement Wednesday.
Eckersley and Molitor criticized Rose for bad timing.
"It's a little disappointing in the timing because we can all see the attention it's getting," Molitor said. "I answered questions for an hour yesterday but the only one that was used on the front page of USA Today was about Pete Rose."
Rose's publisher, Rodale Inc., originally announced last year that the book would be released in March 2004 but moved up the date to Jan. 8 -- two days after the announcement of this year's Hall election results.
Sports Illustrated, which Rodale said bought first serialization rights for the issue hitting newsstands Wednesday, put excerpts on its Web site Monday. The Associated Press wrote its own story Monday about Rose's admission based on the excerpts released by Sports Illustrated.
ESPN.com obtained a copy of the book and reviewed it for a story published Tuesday. The review included passages from "Pete Rose: My Prison without Bars".
"My publisher worked hard to contain the news of this book until after the Hall of Fame announcements, and we were both upset when a media leak on Sunday caused the news to be announced on Monday," Rose said.
However, Sports Illustrated says it released the excerpts only after consultation with Rodale. Originally, the magazine planned to publish the excerpts on Wednesday but moved up the date because details of the book were starting to get out.
"Sports Illustrated and Rodale mutually agreed on Sunday to release the excerpts on Monday morning," said Rick McCabe, a spokesman for the magazine.
Hall chairman Jane Forbes Clark was disappointed the book was released this week.
"I think the timing was very unfortunate," she said Wednesday after the Hall's news conference for Eckersley and Molitor. "It's unfortunate because this should be their day."
Only about half of the 157 Hall voters surveyed by Tribune Co. newspapers said they would vote for Rose if he became eligible, well short of the 75 percent necessary for election. Seventy-one writers said they would vote for Rose, 75 said they wouldn't and 11 said they were undecided. There were 506 Hall voters this year.
Rose admits in the book, "Pete Rose: My Prison without Bars," that he placed bets on the Cincinnati Reds during the time he managed the team in the late 1980s.
He repeated those admissions in a Dec. 12 interview with ABC News' "Primetime Thursday," parts of which aired for the first time Monday on "Good Morning America."
"I am terribly sorry for my actions and for my bad judgment in ever wagering on baseball, and I deeply regret waiting so many years to come clean," Rose said in his statement. "I would like to apologize to the fans for abusing their trust, but I thank them all for their continuing faith in me."
Rose accepted a permanent ban from baseball in August 1989 and applied to commissioner Bud Selig for reinstatement in 1997. In November 2002, he met with Selig and admitted betting on baseball.
"I hoped that the public admission, coordinated with my hopeful reinstatement back into baseball, would have taken place shortly thereafter," Rose said. "It was always my intent for the book to follow a public admission coordinated with baseball."
Molitor remembered his own problems with drugs and compared his situation to that of Rose.
"My involvement and choice to experiment with drugs early in my career is something that I regret," Molitor said. "To be contrite you first have to acknowledge that what you did was wrong, but I'm not sure that Pete has done that."
What Rose intended for his public confession has gone terribly awry, former teammate Mike Schmidt said.
"It doesn't look good, it's taken a turn for the worse," he told the AP. "It is a sad thing. ... I haven't heard anything good, but I hope the commissioner is reserving judgment. I've heard some of the worst references about Pete."
John Dowd, the investigator who compiled the report for baseball that led to Rose's ban, would not comment on Rose's turnabout, which followed 14 years of denials by the career hits leader.
"I really don't want to get into a Dowd vs. Rose," Dowd said Wednesday.
Also in the book, Rose writes he has had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Behavior, which he says he got from his mother, and the book contains several quotes from a doctor about the effects. He repeats that he still loves to gamble legally at racetracks, and describes himself as "grumpy, short-tempered and cold-hearted."
He also talks about the emotional moment when he faced his family before going to prison and "humiliating body searches" in prison. He recounts anecdotes of his career such as taking an umpire to dinner after he was ejected from a game and makes a few puerile jokes.
He also compares his compulsive gambling to the behavior of former President Clinton, actors Robert Downey Jr. and Winona Ryder, and blames former Reds manager Jack McKeon and general manager Jim Bowden for not giving Pete Rose Jr. enough of a chance when he played for Cincinnati in 1997.
Source: ESPN
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