Even Tom Sizemore (above, right) finds the latest Pete Rose stories kind of tiresome, but he’s probably not read the following yet from the Cincinnati Enquirer’s John Erardi.
John Dowd, who wrote the 1989 report that resulted in Pete Rose being banned from Baseball, said today that Rose did not bet on the Reds every night, when Rose was the Reds’ manager.
That counters what Rose told ESPN radio in an interview Wednesday. Rose told Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann that he bet on the Reds “every night” when he was the team’s manager.
Rose also told the radio station that the Dowd Report noted that Rose bet on every game while he was the Reds manager.
No so, says Dowd.
“When (Mario) Soto and (Bill) Gullickson pitched, he didn’t bet on the Reds,” Dowd said on Thursday, when reached at his Washington, D.C. office. “We only put in the report what we could find and corroborate three different ways.”
Dowd said he thinks Rose is hoping the admission will help him gain reinstatement into Baseball. Rose has been banned since 1989.
“Sounds to me like he’s pandering to the commissioner. It’s as though he’s saying ‘If I just say it this way, they’ll let me me back in the game.'”
Dowd said he thought this wasn’t a sound strategy for reinstatement.
“OK, he’s now admitted he violated the capital crime of baseball every single day. Now he’s saying ‘I violated Rule 21 every day.’ And baseball is now supposed to let him back into the game?”
Suggesting that Alex Rodriguez’ recent comments on “Mike & The Mad Dog” were “part of an ongoing campaign to irritate Yankees fans as much as possible,” The New York Sun’s Tim Marchman insists that “Rodriguez will indeed opt out after this season, and not because of the jeers of Yankees fans, but because he will make tens of millions of dollars more if he hits the market at age 31 than he will at age 34.”
It doesn’t take genius to see that Rodriguez is in a general decline. In his three years with the Yankees, only his 2005 MVP campaign has been in line with the years he routinely had when he was younger. In addition to sinking offensive numbers, his defense last year was downright awful, due largely, I think, to his carrying around too much weight in an attempt to offset slightly declining bat speed.
Even if Rodriguez belts 50 home runs, wins a Gold Glove, and single-handedly drags the Yankees to a world championship, that’s just going to increase his value and his incentives to sign a monster contract while he still can.
While the Mets’ Tom Glavine has held the Marlins scoreless through 4 innings tonight, former teammate Steve Trachsel holds the distinct dishonor of having been outdueled (and I’m using the word in the loosest way imaginable) by Sidney Ponson in the Twins’ demolition of the Orioles.