BASEBALL : DAILY REPORT : AROUND THE MAJOR LEAGUES : Rose: Reds Lucky to Be in Contention

The defending World Series champion Cincinnati Reds are overrated, in Pete Rose’s opinion. Rose, who led the Reds to four consecutive second-place finishes from 1985-88, said his former team is lucky to still be in contention the way it has played.

Rose was banned from baseball for illegal gambling midway through the 1989 season. He suggested last year’s team wasn’t much better than the ones he managed. “They won 91. We won 89,” he said. “Two more games, but they won the whole ball of wax because the other teams in the West really weren’t playing that well.”

After the news conference, Rose was to fly to Florida to take up permanent residence.

He would have been eligible for election to the Hall of Fame next year had not a rule been passed to prevent people on the disqualified list being considered.

“When you talk about the Hall of Fame, what you’re talking about is really getting something you think you earned,” Rose said. “I did a lot of things on the baseball field, and I’d hate like hell to think I was never going to the Hall of Fame because I gambled on other sports other than baseball--that’s really what it amounts to.”

Jeff Banister, who has withstood 12 operations for cancer, bad knees and a back injury that threatened to paralyze him, joined the Pittsburgh Pirates to replace injured catcher Don Slaught.

Banister, 26, who ignored a doctor’s advice to have a leg amputated, having seven operations so he could keep playing baseball, was nearly overwhelmed when he learned he was going to the majors. It became even more of a fairy tale-day when he singled to shortstop in his first major league at-bat as a pinch-hitter in the seventh inning of the Pirates’ 12-3 victory over Atlanta.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer, citing unidentified sources in the American League, reported that the Indians have requested outright waivers on Doug Jones, the team’s all-time save leader. Jones, 34, is 1-7 with a 7.47 earned-run average and six saves in 11 opportunities.