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Rose optimistic Hit king talks about re-instatement
Posted: Friday December 03, 1999 05:53 PM
Pete Rose is hoping the World Wide Web will help him steer his way back into baseball, and possibly the Hall of Fame. He announced on Tuesday a petition drive on the Internet to help sway public opinion in hopes of convincing Baseball to re-instate him. Rose wants back in the sport so he can manage again. CNN/SI's national correspondent Sonja Steptoe spoke with Rose for this edition of Page One . Sonja Steptoe: What are you getting out of this, other than just good feelings and the warm and cuddily support of your fans? How much is Sportcut paying you? Pete Rose: How much are you getting paid? Steptoe: I'm not getting paid by Sportcut. Rose: Well, I am. You're getting paid by somebody. You love this so much you'd do it for nothing, right? Yeah. I don't think it's anybody's business how much I'm getting paid. It's just like when you go to casinos and do appearances. I have to make a living. And Mr. Koppleman is a very generous fellow. His timing is unbelievable. If they want to use me to get hits (on the site), it's working. I don't mind that. Baseball teams use you to get base hits. Restaraunt people use you to put good food on the table. So I'm not concerned about that. Obviously, I'm not doing this for nothing. Steptoe: Did the reaction to the Jim Gray interview with you embolden you to pursue some of these avenues? Rose: No, not really. Because when you say, "pursue avenues," Sonja, I pursue avenues every day because I have a 10-year-old daughter and I have a 15-year-old son whose shoe size changes every month. So I have to make a living. Sure, I would like not to go to casinos and do other things. I would like to be just a manager of a baseball team and work on trades and personnel changes in the off-season. And if baseball doesn't want me around casinos, that's fine. All they have to do is make it so I don't have time to go and won't need to go. Because believe it or not, you can ask a lot of athletes, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, we're all at the 3,000-hit show that I was at All-Century weekend. They pay good. They pay good. But that doesn't mean you're a bad person because you go to casinos. How are they going to have a 3,000-hit show if I'm not there? What am I going to tell the promoter? "Well, tell the other 18 guys I don't want to do the show there. Let's do it in Hoboken, New Jersey and see how many people show up?"
And another thing, I'm always criticized about going to casinos. I can see where a red flag might come up if I go to Las Vegas and go into a sportsbook. Because if I go to Atlantic City, if I go to Foxwoods, if I go to Mohican Sun or if I go to a riverboat in Indiana or a riverboat in Iowa, the last time I checked there's no sports betting there. Nevada is the only state in this country that has sports betting. And I wasn't suspended from baseball for betting on blackjack. Steptoe: The CNN/USA Today poll that's in the paper today [Tuesday] suggested the majority of fans believe you deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. But the majority also still believes you bet on baseball. Does it bother you they don't believe you? Rose: I can't control that. I don't look at a lot of fans' polls. I was on with (The Early Show's) Bryant Gumbel today and he told me about a poll. And I said, "How many people did you take?" And he said, "11-hundred." I said, "There are 270 million people in this country. And you're going to poll 11-hundred?" I said, "There more than that standing outside the window watching our interview. Let's go out and poll them and see if we can't get more than 74 percent." Steptoe: What does your gut tell you about what Major League Baseball is going to do?
Rose: Sonja, it's great that we have dialogue going because that's something that hasn't happened the last two years. I didn't expect it to happen the first eight years because I didn't apply for reinstatement. You can heal a lot of wounds if you start talking to each other. I don't know if anything will come of it. I hope. I'm a very optimistic person. I've got momentum right now. I mean there's a lot of great support from a lot of great fans out there and I really appreciate it. So I can't really tell. Just like I don't know what I'm going to get for Christmas [laughs]. Steptoe: Will you sue Baseball if you don't get what you want? Rose: Sue is a big word. That's the last thing in the world we want to do is fight. But if it's the last resort you have to think about it because you know and I know that Baseball is costing me a lot of money by not being in baseball. It's costing me a bundle. This is one country, I don't know about the countries the other way, this is one country where you can't keep a guy from making a living. Latrell Sprewell proved that. Steptoe: Sounds like you won't apologize for anything. Rose: Oh, I apologize over a lot of things. Yeah, I apologize. I was wrong betting with those bookmakers. You're damn right I was wrong. I'm very sorry that happened. But I must tell you, when you start talking about apologizing, I should apologize to my boy, girl and my wife. That's who I hurt. I didn't hurt you. I'm not so sure that I believe that I stained the game of baseball.
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