ANALYSIS : Case Forces Sports Media to Examine News Role

That the Pete Rose story was a Page 1 item in morning newspapers and the subject of news cut-ins by the major television networks when official word of suspension was announced Thursday morning reminds us of the strange relationship sport has with hard news in this country.

Although Americans are said to be more interested in sport than politics, the news of our games is usually confined to the sports pages or tightly managed spots on newscasts.

When sports hits Page 1 and makes headlines on the evening news it’s usually a sign that something has gone wrong in the sports world.

Certainly the Rose case has forced sportswriters and commentators to closely examine their arena over these past six months. While the story of Rose’s alleged gambling has been told and retold since March, sports commentators have often asked whether Rose should be elected to the Hall of Fame.

The question of “the player” vs. “the man” will continue to be discussed because Americans, quite simply, don’t like to have their sports stories move dramatically outside the white lines.

Nevertheless, the way ESPN has been following the saga reveals just how much it means to sports and fans. Thursday, ESPN devoted nearly two hours to live morning coverage of the news conferences surrounding the day’s events and lengthened its evening SportsCenters to one hour from the usual 30-minute format.

Bob Ley, who anchored live coverage of the July hearings when Rose gained a temporary reprieve, was back in the studio Thursday as ESPN completed its long pursuit of the story.

Charlie Steiner, one of the ESPN SportsCenter regulars, had no doubts as long as six weeks ago that the Rose coverage was revolutionary for American sports television.

“Ten years from now our Pete Rose coverage may be a watershed in this industry,” Steiner said in July during the legal parrying involving Rose and Major League Baseball. “We are the only network that could devote all the time to it. This is our domain.”

The other broadcasters were very much present, however, when the news of Rose’s suspension became fact.

If they don’t make sports their 24-hour-a-day business, they certainly were aware that this particular event transcended the ordinary limits.

CBS had three live morning reports and spokesman Tom Goodman said, “This was a story of overwhelming importance. We had reports in “CBS Morning News” and “CBS This Morning” and also went live to Cincinnati for the Rose press conference.”

Goodman recalled that CBS News had included such stories as the Ben Johnson drug scandal, the death of Len Bias and the NFL strike on similar news reports.

At ABC, “World News Tonight” spokesman Scott Richardson recalled that his network had included the Johnson Olympic drug story and Dave Dravecky’s recent comeback from cancer as news stories, but said that the Rose affair was different.

“When the story broke it was quickly a news story,” he recalled, “and the fact that it has gone on over such a long period of time added to that. Part of the story was the delay.”

Certainly scandal is no longer unusual in American sports.

Rose, however, always seemed to be in a different category, perhaps because his style of play had been so universally lauded by the same sports reporters who had to deal with the less savory side of their beats.

Rose seemed a throwback to the days before the big money came into the game. Although a millionaire because of his playing skills, Rose always looked as though he belonged to the Gas House Gang of the 1930s rather than the businessman’s elite of the modern player-agent age. He was a comfortable kind of hero.

Having helped to perpetuate some of the Rose myth, it is not particularly easy now to separate that personna and the man on an August day in 1989. That’s why sportswriters and commentators might feel more comfortable wondering what this does to Rose’s Cooperstown credentials.

That, at least, is a question that seems to fit within the neater, sports-first package.

Yet the Rose story led the evening news on major American networks Thursday night, proof that its dimensions far transcend such neat categorization.

Ironically the program delayed by ESPN’s expanded early-evening SportsCenter, was a Little League baseball semifinal.