HIT FROM ALL SIDES : Allegations Have Unsettling Effect on Those Close to Red Manager

For most of the summer, Pete Rose’s mother has rarely left her Cincinnati apartment.

First, LaVerne Rose Noeth, 74, had a nasty cold. “And those antibiotics I took made me feel sick to my stomach,” she said.

Then followed the allegations that her son, manager of the Cincinnati Reds and baseball’s all-time hits leader, had jeopardized his career by betting illegally on major league games.

“I am a wreck, a total wreck,” Noeth said on a recent evening. “I have a right to be, don’t you think? After all, I’m Pete Rose’s mother.”

Noeth cannot escape her son’s troubles--not when she turns on a radio, not when she picks up a newspaper.

“My daughter says, ‘Mother, you’ve got to get out of that apartment,’ ” Noeth said. “But I sit here because I’m afraid to run into people that know me. I’m afraid they’ll say something about Pete and I’ll get mad. I’ve got a fiery temper.”

In Cincinnati, the reality of the Pete Rose case is setting in.

Joe Kaiser, Rose’s friend for 40 years, said he is concerned that Pete has a gambling problem.

“Pete and I have had words about it many times,” Kaiser said. “He might have a compulsive problem. I think it should be addressed.”

Dave Rose said a proposed partnership with his brother in a chili restaurant chain has fallen through because of concerns by the parent company that “Pete’s got a little dark cloud over him. They’re worried about their image.”

Noeth frets about reports that a federal grand jury is probing whether her son paid taxes on his gambling winnings and baseball card show income.

“I say, ‘Oh God, will he go to jail?’ ” she said. “A mother thinks of everything.”

Baseball’s major charge against Rose--that he bet on his own team--carries a lifetime suspension from the sport. Rose has told Commissioner Bart Giamatti that he wagered on football and basketball but not baseball. Giamatti’s four-month investigation, headed by Washington lawyer John Dowd, determined that Rose wagered on baseball games with three bookmakers, using five intermediaries, two of whom allegedly were involved in illegal drug activity.

Typically brash, Rose has predicted that he will be vindicated. “It was a hatchet job, a piece of crap,” he said of Dowd’s investigation. “If people think this is all bad for baseball, I just want them to know: It ain’t my fault. I didn’t start this thing. I just want a fair hearing. If I get a fair shake I will prove everybody wrong. Believe me.”

Rose has filed suit against Giamatti in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court in Cincinnati, but Giamatti’s lawyers asked Judge John Holschuh of U.S. District Court to move the case to a federal court and Holschuh ruled Monday that the case should be heard in federal court.

While Rose awaits his day in court, his case hangs insufferably over baseball’s 113th season.

“And people are blaming me,” he said. “It’s amazing how much criticism you get because you’re trying to get a fair shake.”

To understand the trouble that confronts Rose today, some history may be helpful:

The son of a bank clerk who lived on Cincinnati’s lower-income west side, Peter Edward Rose hustled to achieve his two overriding ambitions in life: earning a big league uniform and a big league paycheck. A high school truant, he signed with the Reds in 1960, despite an initial scouting report that read: “He can’t hit, run, throw or field. All he can do is hustle.”

He received a $7,000 signing bonus and a promise of $5,000 more if he ever made the big league roster. When he did, in the spring of 1963, he gleefully told reporters, “Great! Now they’ll have to give me my $5,000.”

From the beginning Rose had a work ethic that made Cincinnati residents proud. Arms pumping, legs churning, he played with breathless abandon, sliding face-first to beat a tag, tumbling into the third-base box seats to snag a foul ball, running to first base after drawing a walk.

Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, New York Yankee stars, couldn’t resist teasing the switch-hitting second baseman during a spring training game. “Hey you, Charlie Hustle,” they yelled. The nickname stuck.

With a .273 batting average to complement his dirt-raising style of play, Rose was selected National League rookie of the year. His immediate goal? “A good-sized raise in pay.” Because? “I’m going to be worth it.”

It turned out to be a busy off-season for Rose. First he was drafted into the Army and, perhaps fittingly, underwent basic training at Ft. Knox. Then he married a clerk-typist named Karolyn Engelhardt. They had been introduced, again perhaps fittingly, at a race track. Rose had a passion for horse racing.

Although he was earning only $12,500 after his rookie season, he enjoyed musing with reporters about his financial possibilities.

“Sure, I’d play this game for nothing if they didn’t pay anything,” he said. “But they pay big, and I want my fair piece of the pie. Money is important to me, I admit it.”

His ambition was to become the first non-home run hitter to earn $100,000.

“I make $46,000 now,” he said at the start of the 1967 season. “They gave me a $21,500 raise last year--the biggest raise in Cincinnati history. What do you think they have to give me if I win the batting championship? Another $20,000. That would put me in the $70,000 class. Or suppose we win the pennant and I’m the MVP? They got to hike me to $70,000. And when you’re that close, they don’t mind raising you to $100,000 in a year or two.”

The Reds did exactly that after Rose led the league in batting the next two seasons. With his distinctive Prince Valiant haircut, the legend of Charlie Hustle spread far beyond major league ballparks.

He was as popular in Hollywood, where Milton Berle was now a “good friend,” as he was on Madison Avenue, where he pitched Mountain Dew, Swanson’s TV dinners and sang, “There’s something about an Aqua-Velva man.” Rose, however, refused to endorse beer or cigarettes, saying, “I would rather not do a commercial for anything I wouldn’t want kids to go out and buy.”

Under the auspices of Pete Rose Enterprises, Inc., he invested in farmland, a bowling alley and a Lincoln-Mercury dealership. But his favorite car was neither a Lincoln nor a Mercury.

“Pete’s a Porsche man,” younger brother Dave said. “Pete feels it only costs a little more to go first class.”

Despite his fame, Rose had no qualms about leaning out of his Porsche--or Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow II--to sign an autograph or two.

“I don’t sign them because a guy is supposed to,” he wrote in an autobiography, “The Pete Rose Story.” “I sign them because I get a big kick out of it.”

If Pete Rose was king of Cincinnati, his subjects were unswervingly loyal. Consider the revolt of ‘76, when, after leading the Reds to a World Series sweep of the Yankees, Rose asked for a $400,000 annual contract. When the Reds balked, fans besieged the club with angry phone calls and letters, even set up a Pete Rose Salary Fund. Rose got his money.

Not so two years later, however, when the Reds refused to meet his demands for an even fatter deal. Then 37 and in his 16th major league season, Rose became a free agent, giving team owners the opportunity to bid for his services. And bid they did, with Rose traveling to five cities to hold what some observers described as a crude public auction.

“If the owners didn’t have it, they wouldn’t give it away,” Rose reasoned.

He settled on a four-year, $3.2-million package from the Philadelphia Phillies.

As a Phillie, his image was tarnished somewhat by a scandal over amphetamines prescriptions--his name surfaced, but he was never charged--a paternity suit he did not contest and squabbles with Karolyn, his wife of 17 years and the mother of their two children. Karolyn Rose complained that her husband had been openly dating Carol Woliung, a former Playboy bunny who tended bar near Riverfront Stadium.

A divorce was granted, property was divided, and in November of 1983 the Phillies--tired of paying $10,000 a game to an aging singles hitter--declined to renew his contract. He signed with the Montreal Expos but was traded in August of ’84 to the Reds, who named him player-manager.

Suddenly, Rose was on a roll again. He bought a chalet-style house in Cincinnati’s exclusive Indian Hill neighborhood; married Woliung, who is 13 years younger; and, in the fall of ‘85, after stroking his record-setting 4,192nd hit, President Reagan was on the line.

“I want to congratulate you for breaking one of the most enduring records in sports,” Reagan said. “Your record may (someday) be broken, but your reputation and legacy are secure.”

Peter Ueberroth, then baseball commissioner, agreed that Rose was perfect for the role of hit king. After all, Ueberroth said, Rose was a “good-will ambassador for baseball” and “role model for children.”

Rose made the most of his living-legend stature, turning himself into a one-man memorabilia business that marketed “official” Pete Rose caps, posters, pennants, buttons, plates, jerseys, figurines, newsletters, medallions, lithographs, beer mugs, videotapes, key chains and T-shirts.

He also profited by selling some of his possessions, usually to friends. A Rolex watch went for $11,000, a Corvette--a gift for breaking Ty Cobb’s hit record--for $55,000. The bat and ball used for his record hit were sold to his insurance agent, a baseball memorabilia collector, for $125,000.

“You have to go to this guy’s house to appreciate the Pete Rose collection he has,” Rose said.

Then there was the baseball card show circuit. Although Rose still got a “big kick” out of signing his name, he now wanted to be compensated for the exercise. Dowd’s investigation portrayed Rose as a shrewd, if sometimes unorthodox, businessman:

Typically, Rose would hire a private plane to fly to a show city and, over a 2 1/2-hour period, sign 1,000 autographs for a guarantee of between $7,000 and $12,000. Rose said he would collect his fee in cash if he didn’t know the promoter.

“I don’t need to take a check home for $8,100 and . . . (have it) bounce on me two days later,” he said.

Rose usually was accompanied on those trips by friends who assumed responsibility for counting his money, putting it into a bag and carrying it out of the show.

“I don’t want someone, a fan, to see someone handing me money,” Rose said. “It’s bad enough to sit down and sell autographs without having a stack full of money.”

Rose’s traveling companions included Paul Janszen, a body builder who has admitted selling steroids and cocaine, and has served four months in a halfway house this year for filing a false income tax return; Don Stenger, a gym owner who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for cocaine trafficking and tax evasion; and Tommy Gioiosa, a gym manager who was indicted this spring on charges of tax evasion and conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

Rose said he had no knowledge at the time that any of his friends or acquaintances might have been engaged in criminal activity.

Rose lent his name and financial support to Pete Rose Hit King Marketing Inc., a New York company operated by Mike Bertolini, a dealer in baseball cards and memorabilia. Under questioning by Dowd, Rose said that in the fall of ’86 he lent $88,000 to Bertolini without asking him to sign a note. The loan was made in 11 checks of $8,000 each, payable to fictitious names.

“It was just my way of sending Mike money . . . to prepay some athletes for (card) shows,” Rose told Dowd. “ . . . I was just helping Mikey out.”

Rose said he didn’t want to send Bertolini a single $88,000 check because “that would wake up the world.” He said the checks were written for $8,000 because, “If you make them for over 10, then you’ve got to fill out a bank form and stuff.”

Rose might have been referring to the federal law that requires banking institutions to report to the IRS cash transactions of $10,000 or more.

(Rose had a go-round with U.S. Customs in ’81 when he failed to declare $46,197.54 in cash on his return from a trip to Japan. In 1986 he paid a civil penalty equal to half of the unreported amount.)

Although he was earning a lot of money, Rose was spending a lot. He owned a Rolls, a BMW M-1, three Porsches, thoroughbred horses, houses in Florida and Ohio and a piece of a popular Cincinnati nightspot. And he had an expensive hobby: gambling.

Even casual acquaintances knew Rose was dedicated to the track. It wasn’t until last year, however, that baseball officials began hearing allegations that he had wagered on baseball--including the Reds.

Early in 1988, Janszen was being investigated by the FBI, IRS and Drug Enforcement Administration for allegedly selling cocaine and anabolic steroids. In a meeting with federal agents, Janszen said he was asked to discuss his relationship with Rose.

At first Janszen said he refused because, “I didn’t want to hurt him.”

He said he reconsidered after having a dispute with Rose over a gambling-related loan. In March of 1988, Janszen told federal agents he had placed bets for Rose on baseball, football and basketball games.

Aware of the allegations, Ueberroth met with Rose on Feb. 20 of this year. At the meeting in New York, also attended by Giamatti, Rose was asked if he had ever bet on a major league game. He said he hadn’t.

Later when a New York Times reporter inquired about the meeting, Ueberroth said, “There’s nothing ominous and there won’t be any follow-through.”

Three days later, however, Ueberroth hired Dowd to follow through. On Feb. 24, Dowd and Kevin Hallinan, baseball’s security director, met Janszen in Cincinnati. During two days of tape-recorded interviews, Janszen described his gambling relationship with Rose and others, including Ron Peters, a bookmaker from Franklin, Ohio. So began baseball’s investigation of Pete Rose.

Rose has maintained his innocence from the start. Responding to a newspaper story that he had wagered on basketball games, Rose told a reporter: “ . . . Bet on basketball? I don’t. It’s illegal.”

According to baseball’s records, however, he later told Dowd he had bet on basketball, both college and pro.

In March, Dowd offered a proposition to Peters, who was awaiting sentencing on federal drug and tax charges: Tell us about your dealings with Rose and we’ll inform your judge of your cooperation in baseball’s investigation.

Peters accepted, and on March 23 told Dowd and Hallinan that Rose wagered an estimated $1 million with him over a three-year period.

“Did he place bets on the Cincinnati Reds?” Dowd asked. “Yes,” Peters said.

On April 18, newly installed commissioner Giamatti sent a letter to the federal judge, lauding Peters’ cooperation as “candid, forthright and truthful.”

Rose’s lawyers later questioned how Giamatti could have characterized Peters’ testimony as truthful when he hadn’t heard Rose’s side of the story. Dowd didn’t begin questioning Rose until April 20.

“It’s obvious that the commissioner made up his mind or he wouldn’t have sent that letter,” Rose said in the recent interview. “I mean, the letter said, ‘Mr. Peters is truthful . . . ‘ so why would Giamatti believe anything I say?”

Rose refused to attend a hearing called by Giamatti June 26. “I wasn’t interested in going to New York to get my head cut off,” he said.

Not far from Riverfront Stadium, on Pete Rose Way, Joe Kaiser manages a bar. The other afternoon Kaiser spoke with sadness and resignation about a man he has known for 40 years.

“I don’t think this is a light issue by any means,” he said. “And I honestly feel that somewhere in time he will draw a suspension and maybe rightly so, because of his behavior. I don’t think he should be betting through a bookie. I never approved of it. I always felt if he wanted to do that, he should go to Las Vegas, where it’s legal.”

Kaiser said he shared his feelings with Rose numerous times.

“He just shrugged it off, said, ‘Mind your own business,’ ” Kaiser said. “How can you talk to a self-made superstar who’s making millions of dollars when you’re Joe Blow, making $450 a week? But I care about him. He’s my friend.”

Kaiser paused to recall some of the sacrifices Rose made to become a baseball legend. Taking batting practice during the ’81 strike “when it was 100 degrees outside.” Dieting on lettuce and watermelon to get down to his spring-training weight.

“This man’s a champion,” Kaiser said. “He worked to get everything he got. But we’re all human. We’re not dealing with an Ivy League graduate here. We’re dealing with a street kid that grew up and overcame insurmountable odds. I believe he should’ve been more discreet. But has Pete Rose ever been discreet about anything?”

Kaiser laughed, uneasily, then fell silent.

“Pete Rose is no altar boy,” he said quietly. “But he’s no Al Capone either. He’s not a threat to anybody. Except to himself.”