Does Pete Rose Cry His Way Into Hall Of Fame?

Pete Rose Just Cried His Way Into Baseball Hall of Fame

9/13/2010 5:09 PM ET By Terence Moore Fanhouse National Columnist

Confessions never are too late. So, after 47 years, whoever really shot JFK still can step forward. Plus, what a teary-eyed Pete Rose said inside a packed ballroom over the weekend at a southern Indiana casino was the verbal line drive he needed for a plaque in Cooperstown.

Rose will make the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Just watch.

It'll happen sooner than later, because the Veterans Committee will do what those of us who vote every year for Hall of Famers as members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America couldn't do. We couldn't vote for Rose (you know, even if we wanted to), because he was never on the ballot. He was ineligible due to his lifetime ban from the game in 1989 for betting on baseball as a manager of the same Reds that he helped make famous as a player in his native Cincinnati.

Rose lied about his betting, too. Then he sort of confessed in a mostly insulting book, and then he hinted later during interviews that those actually were his fingerprints on the betting slips baseball officials discovered at the start of their investigation.

He never said anything like this, though. This was the most sincere, revealing, contrite, sorrowful and flat-out honest Peter Edward Rose ever, and I definitely know. He was my favorite player from the late 1960s until his retirement in 1986. He also was my favorite baseball player to interview for decades after I became a journalist.

The point is, I never saw this Rose, and I wasn't alone.

Said former Rose teammate Tom Browning to John Erardi, a colleague during my days in the 1970s with the Cincinnati Enquirer, "Out of left field. I didn't see it coming."

As for "it," it came during a roast for Rose on Saturday night at that casino, where the historically cocky Charlie Hustle turned into the 69-year-old prodigal son of the Big Red Machine. He told the crowd of 500 or so that included former teammates (Tony Perez, Ken Griffey Sr., Cesar Geronimo, George Foster) that he screwed up. That he essentially was guilty of gambling as charged.

That he wanted to become an example of what you shouldn't do when you have the opportunity to confess your sins.

"I disrespected the game of baseball. When you do that, you disrespect your teammates, the game and your family," said Rose, sobbing along the way to the shock of everybody. He spoke of late baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti, who told Rose to "reconfigure" his life.

Said Rose: "I didn't know what that meant. It took me years and years. ... I'm a hard-headed guy. ... But I'm a lot better guy standing here tonight."

He's a Cooperstown guy, all right. He did the heavy lifting during his 24 seasons that featured nobody playing harder and nobody hugging the game closer to his heart.

As a journalist, I was there during much of his 44-game hitting streak, and I was there 25 years and two days ago when he dropped a single into left field at old Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati to become baseball's all-time hits leader. I also was there with a front-row seat at Riverfront in 1989 when he said in a news conference, "I did not bet on baseball."

Five months earlier, Rose told me during a one-on-one interview in his office at the Reds' former spring-training site in Plant City, Fla., that, when he left for New York days earlier to visit the commissioner's office, it wasn't to discuss gambling, which it was.

So Rose lied to me personally. It was enough for me to declare I wouldn't vote for Rose on my Hall of Fame ballot -- if his name ever appeared -- since the rules call for voters to consider "integrity" and "character." As far as I was concerned, Rose had three strikes against him, and they involved betting on baseball, lying about it overall and lying to me in particular about his visit to the commissioner's office.

I've changed my mind about this Rose thing through the years. He does have more hits than anybody at 4,256.

And let's face it: Rose waffled with his confession in the past, because he spent his life since youth evolving into that "hard-headed guy" in order to will his way to baseball greatness to overcome his underwhelming physical attributes. After a while, he couldn't separate the hard-headed player from the hard-headed person.

Now Rose is doing as much, which is huge. So is the softening of Johnny Bench, a Baseball Hall of Famer and another one of Rose's former teammates on the Big Red Machine. Bench also is a member of the Veterans Committee that can vote players into the Hall of Fame after they are no longer eligible on the writers' ballots.

For years, Bench bashed Rose's gambling/lying issues, and he was adamant that he not follow other Reds greats of their day -- Joe Morgan, Sparky Anderson, Perez and himself -- to Cooperstown.

Well, I huddled with Bench at this year's All-Star Game in Anaheim, Calif., and he had different thoughts on Rose.

Way different.

"We've done things as a committee to try to get Pete in and (current baseball commissioner Bud Selig) has been open to that," Bench said of Selig, who nevertheless has said publicly that he hasn't a reason to re-visit the possibility of removing Rose's lifetime ban.

Then Bench continued, recalling how Veterans Committee members couldn't convince Selig to change his mind: "When it didn't work out, it hurt all of us, and it hurt Bud more than anybody, because Bud wants what's best for this game."

Among other things, Bud wanted Rose to admit what everybody already knew, and now Rose has done it -- and more.

Added Rose to that hushed ballroom, "You can talk about hits and runs and championship games. ... (But) I want my legacy to be (that of) somebody who came forward. If anybody has a problem here today, come forward. Don't hide it. ... You can run, but you can't hide.

"If I can help a young kid to know what I went through, maybe I can prevent them from going through the same thing.

"I got suspended 21 years ago. For 10, 12 years, I kept it inside. ... That's changed. I'm a different guy. ... I love the fans. I love the game of baseball, and I love Cincinnati baseball."

Sounds like a Hall of Famer to me.

I think he should. If your going to let guys in that done steroids might as well let Rose.