Rose, baseball still on the outs – Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette

It has been a long time since Pete Rose was banned from baseball, but apparently not long enough.

Former baseball star Pete Rose keeps asking for reinstatement to Major League Baseball, and baseball commissioners keep saying no.

The latest to do so is Commissioner Rob Manfred, who this week denied Rose’s request that the 26-year-old ban be lifted. Rose, a perennial All-Star and the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, was banned from the game in 1989 for violating the game’s prohibition against betting on baseball games.

Although former Commissioner Fay Vincent said Manfred’s decision should come as “no surprise,” it still did because Manfred had expressed interest in the reinstatement issue. Further, MLB’s institutional stance on Rose has softened over the years, allowing him once again to participate in ceremonial events at regular season games as well as an All-Star game.

In the end, however, Manfred said Rose has failed “to present evidence of a reconfigured life.”

What does that mean?

Well, Rose still bets on sports, including baseball. Given that he’s a Nevada resident, it’s all perfectly legal. More damaging than that, however, was that Rose denied in an interview with Manfred that he had ever bet on games while a player. His previous misconduct was related to his status as a team manager.

The commissioner’s office, however, obtained a gambling notebook kept by Michael Bertolini, one of those Rose retained to place bets for him.

The notebook indicated Rose placed bets in 1986 while he was the Reds’ player/manager.

Armed with that evidence, Manfred concluded that Rose was being dishonest, stating that Rose’s “assertions concerning his gambling habits were directly contradicted by documentary evidence.”

“It is not clear at all that Rose has a grasp of his violations,” the commissioner stated.

Truer words were never spoken. Contrition and self-reflection are not in Rose.

Baseball’s all-time hits leader and one of its greatest players, the maniacally competitive Rose is a force of nature who does as he pleases and worries about consequences later.

Although denied reinstatement, Manfred said, admitting Rose to baseball’s Hall of Fame is a different question. Rose’s accomplishments on the field merit admittance to the Hall, even if his off-field activities were an affront to the integrity of the game.

Many fans today aren’t familiar with Rose’s baseball career In fact, he goes back so far that, early in his career, he bragged that one day he would become baseball’s first $100,000-a-year singles hitter, an unheard-of sum for nonsluggers. Now the game’s minimum salary is much closer to $500,000 a year than $100,000.

Times changed, even if Rose didn’t. As a consequence, he’s still on the outside looking in, exiled from the game he loves for reasons of his own making.