Gambling may be what kept Pete Rose out of baseball’s Hall of Fame, but the hitting legend is betting he can find four people willing to buy him dinner in Las Vegas for $5,000.
Earlier this week, Rose sent an email hawking a night on the town with him, with the four people able to take home an autographed baseballs and pics on their cameras or phones as a souvenir. As part of the package. guests will be paying for the 76-year-old’s meal, they don’t get to pick the restaurant or when the dinner would take place. That apparently will be handled by Rose’s scheduler. Getting to Sin City and the hotel room are also not included.
What is promised are “stories to last a lifetime” from Major League Baseball’s all-time leader in base hits.
Let’s Chat About Gambling
The first area of discussion that could make the evening frostier than the beer consumed would be about his gambling. Rose was banned from baseball in 1989 amidst reports that he wagered on the sport while he was the player-manager of the Cincinnati Reds. He denied the charges but accepted a place on baseball’s ineligible list with the chance of reinstatement.
Three different MLB Commissioners have refused to allow the man nicknamed “Charlie Hustle” back into the sport. The latest was Rob Manfred, who said in 2015 that Rose was still betting on baseball.
Though Rose finally admitted to betting on baseball in 2004, he remains unapologetic about it. In 2017 he told sports announcer Joe Buck he enjoys going to sportsbooks.
“Who cares if I want to make a legal bet and go home and watch it?,” Rose asked. “Who am I hurting? I’m not hurting anybody, I’m living my life.”
Those remarks apparently ruined any chances of earning a late entry into Cooperstown. While Manfred has softened his position on sports betting this year, he still has no intention of eliminating Rose’s penalty.
“During our meeting, Mr. Rose told me that he has continued to bet on horse racing and on professional sports, including baseball,” Manfred said in a press release. “Those bets may have been permitted by law in the jurisdictions in which they were placed, but this fact does not mean that the bets would be permissible if made by a player or manager subject to Rule 21.”
#RoseToo?
Even as he ages, scandal still seems to attach itself to Rose’s name. In 2016, attorney John Dowd brought to light allegations that Rose had sex with an underage teenagers in the 1970s when he was a player for the Cincinnati Reds.
Dowd, the investigator who found evidence the Rose bet on baseball and signed the report that in support of banning him from the game, said on multiple radio shows that one of Rose’s former associates “told us that not only did he run bets, but he ran young girls for him down in spring training, ages 12 to 14.”
Dowd said no statutory rape charges were ever brought but there could’ve been.
In 2017, Rose sued Dowd for defamation.
The claim seemed to have been enough to cost Rose his job as an MLB analyst at Fox Sports. The network didn’t cite allegations of sexual misconduct as the reason for his dismissal, but they chose not to renew his contract in the fall of 2017 after saying in March of the same year he would be back.
The case was dismissed when the two settled out of court for undisclosed terms.
