Quote:
Originally Posted by Kzoo
So then he wasn't purposefully betting for his Reds to lose and/or intentionally making bad decisions during a game to achieve a loss. He should be in for his playing career achievements, no doubt.
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Rose maintained he never bet on baseball (until he needed to sell some books and then said that he in fact did, conceding the obvious). At the end of the investigation in 1989, Rose voluntarily agreed to accept the lifetime ban.
"THEREFORE, the Commissioner, recognizing the benefits to Baseball from a resolution of this matter, orders and directs that Peter Edward Rose be subject to the following disciplinary sanctions, and Peter Edward Rose, recognizing the sole and exclusive authority of the Commissioner and that it is in his interest to resolve this matter without further proceedings, agrees to accept the following disciplinary sanctions imposed by the Commissioner:
a. Peter Edward Rose is hereby declared permanently ineligible in accordance with Major League Rule 21 and placed on the Ineligible List."
It seems difficult to see why Rose would accept the ban and sign off on it, in exchange for "resolv[ing] this matter without further proceedings" unless there was something more that had not yet been shown in the Dowd report. If everything had been found at this point, he would have no reason to agree to the ban in exchange for quashing deeper investigation. A lifetime ban is the most that Major League Baseball could do to him; an effective plea deal where he gets the harshest possibly punishment in exchange for quashing further investigating has never made sense to me, unless there was something more to find. Perhaps that something more was that he had done it while a player too, which came out a few years ago. Perhaps it was something else. It seems to me that some pieces of this story remain a secret, and that the testimony of Pete Rose is completely worthless and changes with whatever benefits him most at the time the statement is given.