Rose Wonders What He Has to Do to Win

Pete Rose feels he has done his part, confessed that he bet on baseball. But instead of absolution, he keeps hearing more condemnation: His apology came too late, was insincere, upstaged the Hall of Fame and brought him more money.

“Now you’re coming clean, and it’s not good enough,” he said Thursday during a 30-minute interview in a suite at a Manhattan hotel. “It’s not right. So how can I win? How can I win if people aren’t going to be fair with me?”

Rose, 62, craves a full, free and unconditional pardon from Commissioner Bud Selig. He wants to get into the Hall of Fame -- but what he really wants is the chance to manage a major league team again.

Rose said a reinstatement with restrictions would be unfair.

“I don’t know if they would ever say, ‘We’ll reinstate you but you can’t work in baseball.’ I don’t think that’s the American way, I really don’t,” Rose said.

He alternated between pleas for forgiveness and the cockiness he made famous during a record-setting playing career that stretched from 1963 to 1986.

In his second autobiography, “Pete Rose: My Prison Without Bars,” he finally confessed that he bet on the Cincinnati Reds while he managed the team in the late 1980s, baseball’s capital crime, one that led to the lifetime ban he agreed to in 1989.

Rose had hoped the release of the book Thursday would be the end of the public debate over whether he deserved a second chance. He would be the first person on the permanent ineligible list to gain reinstatement.

Instead, initial reaction was largely negative. Hall of Fame vice chairman Joe Morgan, his former Red teammate, condemned the commercial aspect of the confession and saw no contrition.

“I’m glad that Pete Rose finally is admitting that he bet on baseball games when he was the manager of the Cincinnati Reds,” Morgan wrote on ESPN.com. “But I wish he had acknowledged his gambling in a different format. I’m disappointed that he chose this course.

“Writing a book is the easy way out -- plus you profit from it.”

Morgan said he has yet to read the book, but he has heard and read reports about its contents.

“I know I haven’t seen a genuine apology from Rose yet,” wrote Morgan, an ESPN baseball analyst. “Nor have I seen any contrition.”

In the interview, Rose disputed that he hadn’t shown remorse.

“I’m kind of surprised that people are jumping the gun before they read the book,” Rose said. “I thought I was remorseful when I needed to be remorseful in here. And I must tell you that it’s hard to be remorseful on paper. You know, talking to you or talking into a camera, it’s a lot easier to be remorseful because you can look at me and hear my tone and things like that.”

He professed to understand Selig’s plight. Rose admitted to Selig in November 2002 that he bet on baseball. And while the commissioner, according to his aides, appreciates Rose’s popularity with fans, he also wonders whether to fear another foul-up by the career hits leader.

“I understand that Bud has to be 150% sure, because he can’t take a chance of being embarrassed,” Rose said. “His reputation’s at stake. ... I don’t think anything in that book is going to make him feel less about me than when he woke up this morning.”

But just a few minutes later, he balked when asked how he would respond if baseball asked him to stop his legal betting at racetracks as a prerequisite for a return.

“I would do anything they say,” he repeated several times, “but they also have to understand one of my means of entertainment is periodically going to the races.”

At times, it seems like Rose’s primary comfort is the fans, the ones who cheered as he got a record 4,256 hits, the ones who cheered him during on-field appearances at the World Series in 1999 and 2002.

But the ban and the five-month prison term he served on tax charges did pierce that tough Ohio armor in one unexpected way.

“I’m not the same guy today as I was 15 years ago,” he said. “You know, I hug my kids and my boys now. And I kiss my boys, I tell them I love them.

“You know,” he said, “I was a tough guy.”