Former Rose Friend Winds Up in Trouble

Pete Rose made an admission Thursday. “I’m guilty of one thing,” he said. “I wasn’t a very good picker of friends.”

While Rose’s Cincinnati Reds were losing to the Dodgers, 4-1, yet another of his former associates--”I’m not their friend anymore,” Rose said--landed in trouble.

Thomas Gioiosa, who lived with Rose’s family several years ago, was arrested at his home in New Bedford, Mass., and later indicted in federal court in Cincinnati on charges of tax evasion and conspiracy to distribute cocaine from Florida in the Cincinnati area.

There has been no suggestion that Rose was involved with drugs. Baseball’s current investigation reportedly centers on gambling, including accusations that Rose bet on baseball.

But the indictment also alleges that Gioiosa falsely claimed $47,646 in gambling winnings from the ticket on a horse race Jan. 16, 1987, at Turfway Park in Florence, Ky., and on his federal tax return for 1987 falsely listed it as income offset partly by gambling losses which would otherwise be non-deductible.

Rose has declined to say whether he was the owner of the winning ticket but said, “The taxes were paid on that Pik Six. Everything is kosher on that Pik Six.”

Several people formerly associated with Gold’s Gym in Cincinnati, where Rose used to work out, are serving prison sentences for drug trafficking. “I never saw Michael Fry outside Gold’s Gym, but I keep reading where he’s my best friend,” Rose told reporters. “It’s the same thing with Don Stenger. Every time something happens, you guys act like they’re my best friends.”