Pete Rose just doesn't get it.
Just being Pete Rose isn't enough to justify doing or saying whatever he wants, regardless of the truth or the impropriety. Baseball's Teflon manager might have gotten away with it before, but now he's become a victim of his own actions, not to mention his own mouth.He told The Washington Post that he bet through an illegal bookmaker "more as a convenience than anything." Rose said he'd love to live close enough to Las Vegas to bet legally on Monday Night Football, but "it's too much to pay for an airplane to go there every damn Monday night."
Stop it, Pete, you're breaking my heart. Anyone got a Kleenex?
I know I have the same problem with paying the bills around the house. It's too danged inconvenient to take money out of my savings account, so I'll just hide my earnings, cheat on my income tax and go on welfare.
How can anyone expect Rose to have to miss wagering on Monday Night Football? Who are we to stand in his way? Isn't it Pete's God-given right to gamble?
Poor, misunderstood Pete.
"If I'm not mistaken, there's a lot of money bet through bookmaking," Rose said. "So I'm not the only one who's doing something wrong."
No, but he's the only one this old who's cocky enough to think that makes it all right, the only one trying to justify it and betting that his name will see him through. Rose is displaying the rationale of an adolescent caught smoking in the boys room or a teen-ager spotted skinny-dipping in the lake. Nobody bought his line then, and nobody should buy it now.
But Peter Rose thinks he can get away with being Peter Pan, the boy in all of us who never grew up. Never any apologies, never any understanding, just a long line of lies and denials and excuses and justifications. For so long, the act was cute, even charming, because no matter how old he was, Pete Rose was a boy playing a boy's game, sliding head-first, running to first base on walks, forever hustling. But now it isn't enchanting anymore. Now it is sad, a grown man acting like the world is his playground, pretending like rules are subject to his interpretation.
You think he cares if his suit in court and status in the dugout hurt his team or his sport? Heck, no. That's why it is ridiculous even to suggest that Pete Rose resign as manager - because he won't. You may as well suggest that Rose shouldn't have gambled with a bookie, for all the good that does. He is the little boy who says he'll go home with his baseball if he isn't allowed to pitch, and for now he's succeeding. "I'll never leave here," Rose said the other day, and he is going to extreme means to ensure it. He's convinced he's the manager for the Reds, that he has every right to maintain his job no matter what his wrongs.
I don't even like going to the ballpark, anymore - and normally I love baseball. But Pete Rose is spitting on it. He has allowed his ego and his arrogance to take over, and he is not so much a symbol of the benefits of hard work as of the danger of self-glorification.
When this is all over, can you see Rose asking for help with his gambling unless he has an angle, such as potential reinstatement? Can you really see him walking into a Gamblers Anonymous meeting and humbly saying, "Hi, I'm Pete R." before sincerely expressing how he'd hurt himself and those who cared?
Maybe, hopefully, Pete Rose will learn some humility, some responsibility some day. Maybe when Rose is out of baseball - and he will be out of baseball before long, for a long time if not forever - he will look back and realize how this gambling scandal has affected his life. He might say this was the best thing that ever happened to him, and apologize to everyone for putting them through one of sports' darkest seasons.
Then again, maybe this is wishful thinking.
To Rose, it's all right to tell the press he gambled illegally through a bookie because "I didn't say anything in that column that wasn't in the report" compiled by John Dowd. And though Rose is correct in content, he is ignorant to the context. You can't walk around arrogantly boasting about your illegal gambling exploits when it casts a shadow on your sport. Either you shut up, or you show some humility. But you don't make excuses and assume that because you were a great baseball player you will be exonerated.
Pete Rose just doesn't get it.