So now Pete Rose is not only admitting he bet on baseball, but he's admitting he bet on his team, the Cincinnati Reds, to win every night. While this may not make the most financial sense (since even great teams still lose at least 60 times), you can't fault Charlie Hustle's faith in his club. For the record, Rose's managerial career with the Reds resulted in 412 wins and 373 losses. So assuming he bet the same amount every time, he's "up" for his career, minus the jail time, of course.Here's my point. I understand why betting on baseball is illegal for players, managers, and staff. It could lead to any number of ills, with the worst-case scenario being a repeat of the 1919 Chicago White Sox scandal, where 8 players intentionally threw the World Series. Players who do/did that have no respect for the game and thus, deserve none in return. But Rose wasn't betting against his team (at least he says he wasn't). This is a guy who wanted to win...who had to win. It didn't matter what he was doing. He wanted to win every time, at every thing. For him, the financial gain associated with a win was just the icing on the cake. He loved the game, he loved his team, and he played it and managed it with everything he had. But he broke the golden rule and has paid a stiff penalty. More than a decade later, does that still warrant a lifetime ban and an outsiders' view of the Hall Of Fame? I'm not sure it does.
3 comments:
I never thought it did personally. It's like you said, he never did anything as a manager to hurt his team in order to win a bet. There are some people in the Hall of Fame that have committed serious crimes, in time there will be players who were known to take performance enhancing drugs in the HOF. Clearly in most cases statistics and playing ability overshadow character issues so why is it different for a guy with 4,000 hits.
It's hard to say how much he actually won. Assuming he paid a 10 percent juice on every lost bet as most bookies take, and lets say he bet 100 on each game (probably more), he would have won 41,200 (412*100) for each bet won while losing 41,030 (373*110) totally a whopping $170.
Anybody watch "Eight Men Out"? The Black Sox scandal illustrates why gambling on your sport can be problematic. I'm not so concerned about players getting paid to throw games. Eventually that will get old. Evntually the player will get a conscience, and not do it anymore. But in the Black Sox time, and likely in Rose's time, being indebted to your bookie was a dangerous prospect. At that point, the bookie could compel you to do things you might not otherwise do.
So maybe Rose never bet against the Reds. And maybe Rose never got so far into debt that a bookie could have coerced him to do anything. But the association alone creates the appearance that something could be wrong.
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