While Chips Are Down for Rose, Teams Cash In

Don Sutton, Larry Doby and Jaime Jarrin are among the six who will be inducted into the Hall of Fame two weeks from today.

Thousands will gather on that verdant hill in Cooperstown, N.Y., to watch the ceremonies, some certain to shout, “we want Pete, we want Pete.”

It will not be the first time that Bud Selig, now officially baseball’s ninth commissioner, has heard the voices.

He also has read Pete Rose’s request to be reinstated.

Neither the passage of time nor Selig’s formal appointment, however, will result in Rose’s removal from the suspended list, making baseball’s all-time hits leader eligible for the Hall.

The evidence that Rose bet on baseball while manager of the Cincinnati Reds is overwhelming, industry sources insist.

The late Bart Giamatti said as much when he announced the agreement with Rose regarding his suspension. Rose has never acknowledged or apologized for violating one of baseball’s most sacred rules.

“He voluntarily entered into that agreement, and nothing has happened since, there is nothing new in the equation, to undo what Bart did,” Selig said Saturday. “There is no reason to think about it.”

Perhaps, there is.

Perhaps, some would say, a measure of hypocrisy has crept into the business.

At least five teams--either directly or indirectly--are now married to gambling interests financially.

The Florida Marlins and Minnesota Twins accept advertising revenue from local casinos, and the Dodgers, Arizona Diamondbacks and Chicago White Sox include the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority among sponsors.

It was only 15 years ago that Hall of Fame players Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle were banned by then commissioner Bowie Kuhn merely for accepting public-relation roles with Atlantic City casinos.

Peter Ueberroth, Kuhn’s successor, lifted the ban two years later, and now the casinos are openly courting the clubs, or is it the other way around?

Visit the Diamondbacks’ Internet site and you can link with the Las Vegas Authority’s own home page, where its gaming guide includes a listing of sports books.

Minnesota’s Treasure Island Casino has a similar cyberlink with the Twins’ Internet site. The Marlins run stadium and broadcast ads for casinos operated by local Native American tribes.

Selig, however, said he saw no relation between the sponsorships and Rose situation, nor does he think those sponsorships weaken what he called baseball’s sensitivity toward and responsibility for seeing that baseball’s rules regarding gambling remain sacrosanct--rules, he said, that are stronger than in any other sport.

“Gambling is now legal just about everywhere,” Selig said. “There are casinos within a few miles of many ballparks. We can’t act as if it doesn’t exist. I mean, as life and society changes, there are changes we have to make as an industry. That doesn’t mean we’re diluting our rules or dropping our safeguards, but I think the firewall is strong enough that the integrity of the game won’t be affected.”

He added that all such sponsorships have to be approved first by the commissioner’s office.

Dodger President Bob Graziano said of the club’s association with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor’s Authority: “We’re not directly advertising gambling or a specific hotel or casino. We’re advertising a destination, a city as a whole. In my mind, there’s enough distance from what we’re doing and promoting gambling directly. Baseball’s rules are clear and strict, and that line can’t be crossed.”

The Marlins and Twins, with stadium and broadcast ads for the casinos, are certainly advertising gambling directly.

And Vegas has become a fashionable lure.

The Oakland A’s recently investigated moving there, several teams have looked at it as a possible spring training site, and it annually hosts one or more exhibition series in the spring.

All of it may be legal, as Selig said, but it only recently has become acceptable in the game of Mays, Mantle and Rose.

Money obviously talks--but hadn’t that always been the concern?

WENDY’S WORLD

Selig doesn’t officially take office until Aug. 1, and he wasn’t going to stay away this weekend as his Milwaukee Brewers took on the Chicago Cubs in a sold-out County Stadium--both teams still alive in the National League wild card and Central Division race.

Selig insists he wouldn’t have accepted a five-year contract as commissioner if he wasn’t convinced he couldn’t separate his loyalties. He will put his Brewer shares in a blind trust. Daughter Wendy-Selig Prieb, the club counsel, will become president. Selig-Prieb, 38 and the mother of a month-old daughter, has attended all ownership meetings since her father became acting commissioner on Sept. 9, 1992, and has basically run the Brewers in that time.

The major change now is that dad’s office won’t be next door.

“The office may be different, but his days have been predominantly spent on national issues anyway,” Selig-Prieb said.

“I’ve been using discretion on the issues I’ve discussed with him or haven’t discussed with him [as to remove the conflict-of-interest perception], so this won’t be as significant a change as it was five or six years ago.”

Selig long has been as much fan as owner and official. It is hard for many to believe he can separate himself from the Brewer office, from the habit of sticking his head in and offering advice to Wendy or General Manager Sal Bando.

Selig-Prieb insisted, however, that she would not compromise her or her father’s new roles by seeking advice--on player moves or otherwise.

“He’ll have no involvement,” Selig-Prieb said. “Like everyone else, he’ll have to read about it in the paper.”