Game Is Still Same for Rose Amid Fanfare

Baseball has Pete Rose in a pickle.

It wants to ask him gambling questions he doesn’t want to answer.

Pete Rose is sprinting in one direction, stopping, turning, sprinting in the other direction, asking the world why baseball is doing this to him.

“I didn’t know I could be that bad of a guy,” he says, wincing.

A national audience is transfixed by the hunt, feels sorry for the hunted, wonders the same thing.

A man walks the streets in an Uncle Sam suit, carrying a sign reading, “Free Mr. Baseball. Give the kids a hero.”

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Sunday night in Atlanta?

Try 10 years ago in Cincinnati.

The scene described above occurred on a June weekend when Rose was avoiding one of five hearings baseball had scheduled to give him a chance to tell his side of the gambling story.

What happened Sunday during baseball’s all-century team celebration was just more of the same thing. It has been a decade of the same thing.

Charlie Hustle sprinting, turning, sprinting, tugging at our emotions until they completely cover our eyes.

“Pete must think we all just fell off a turnip truck,” John Dowd said from his Washington law office Monday.

You remember that name? A decade ago, Dowd was hired by baseball to investigate Rose’s gambling.

Dowd eventually compiled the 225-page report that the late commissioner Bart Giamatti used to draw up the 1989 agreement that would sanction Rose with lifetime ineligibility.

An agreement that said Giamatti acted in good faith.

An agreement that said Rose would not contest the decision.

An agreement that Rose signed.

“He agreed to the sanctions, he agreed to the penalties,” Dowd said. “He agreed because he didn’t want a hearing because all the evidence would come out.”

Yet a decade later, it is an agreement that Rose claims was virtually forced upon him at the business end of a pistol.

To convince us, all he needed was a national stage. How odd that it was finally baseball that provided him one.

Stubborn, combative and completely unwilling to admit what even his friends believe should be admitted, Rose slid headfirst through Sunday’s opening and left an entire World Series in a cloud of dust.

During the minute-long standing ovation that accompanied his first official appearance since being banned, Rose threw out his chest and grinned as if saying, the people have spoken.

Such memories, the people.

Ten years ago, when details of the investigation became clear, the only sounds Rose heard were boos.

When polls showed that fans were overwhelmingly in favor of his resigning as manager of the Cincinnati Reds then, Rose fought back.

“You can forget about those polls, they can be 1,000 to one and I’m still going to take out the lineup card,” he said at the time.

Ten years later, Rose is fighting still, when the best tack would be a simple admission, apology and promise to change.

“This was just another of his annual PR efforts,” Dowd said. “I thought it was sad.”

Sadder, still, that after the Atlanta crowd made him a saint, Rose was turned into a martyr by equally self-absorbed national TV reporter Jim Gray.

When Rose denied betting on baseball, as he has done every day for the last 10 years, contrary to all evidence, Gray should have stopped asking.

If he truly believed Pete Rose was the story, he probably would have.

But Jim Gray seemed convinced that the real story was Jim Gray.

In a matter of painful seconds, the reporter did what years of denials could not do.

He turned Pete Rose into a victim.

“[Gray] has to have some respect for the situation, and everyone in here thinks it was pretty disgusting,” Darryl Strawberry said. “It was a special moment for [Rose], and [Gray] ruined it.”

When, in fact, the only victim Sunday night was baseball.

“Bud Selig blew it,” Dowd said. “He shouldn’t have done what he did. Pete shouldn’t have been standing there with all those great players who did not violate Rule 21 [no gambling on baseball].

“Sunday night showed what the commissioner has become, an empty suit with no disciplinary powers.”

If Dowd sounded angry, well, he was the one who came up with the three betting sheets on Cincinnati Red games that bore not just Rose’s fingerprints, but also his handwriting.

Dowd was the one who came up with 10 witnesses who said Rose bet often and heavily on the team he was managing.

Dowd uncovered the phone records that showed frequent calls between Rose’s office and a bookie during the baseball season. It was Dowd’s report that scared Rose into sidestepping five hearings and eventually settling the issue before it ruined him further.

“The evidence was overwhelming and non-contradicted,” Dowd said.

Yet on Sunday, it was Rose who denied ever seeing any of it.

“He hasn’t seen it?” Dowd asked incredulously. “He was signing it and selling it for $289 apiece! You’re telling me he’s signed it and never read it?”

And it was Rose who claimed that even, “Charles Manson gets a hearing every year, doesn’t he?”

Replied Dowd, “That’s outrageous. We gave Pete a chance for a hearing. We gave him five chances for a hearing. He wouldn’t come to a hearing. Instead, he sued us.”

Ten years later, Rose has only one viable gripe. He should be in the Hall of Fame. Any club that would admit that scoundrel Ty Cobb should definitely admit the rascal who out-hit him.

If or when Rose’s name ever appears on the ballot, it will be the first one I will check.

But on the issue of baseball eligibility, if he doesn’t admit he has bet before, how do you know he wouldn’t bet again?

Would you want him in your dugout, filling out as many betting slips as lineup cards? Would you want to even take that chance?

Oh, but because he only bet on his own team, that’s OK, right?

The evidence showed that after several days of placing wagers on the Reds, he wouldn’t bet at all for a couple of days. Which makes you wonder, did he not manage as hard in those games?

When money is involved, doesn’t credibility disappear?

“It doesn’t matter who you bet on, when you put your finances ahead of the game, then the game becomes in question,” Dowd said.

Then there is the argument that, if baseball can excuse druggies such as Steve Howe and Dwight Gooden, why can’t it excuse Rose?

Those players, and many others like them, admitted their problems and sought help.

Rose will admit nothing.

“Baseball wants him back? Fine. Put him back in a Cincinnati dugout, see what happens,” Dowd said, wondering if Rose has settled old losses. “See if those New York mob guys are going to come collecting their $500,000 debt from before.”

Pete Rose is easy to love. He is good for the game. He reminds us of what baseball once was, and what it could be again.

It almost makes you smile to watch him now, doing what he always did best, digging in the batter’s box, fouling off pitch after pitch, fighting to get on base.

As long as baseball keeps throwing Charlie Hustle the good stuff, keeps making him think, and never gives in.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.