Pete Rose Betting
For 26 years, Pete Rose has kept to one story: He never bet on baseball while he was a player.
Pete Rose bet on baseball, and in particular, on games of the Cincinnati Reds Baseball Club during the 1985, 1986, and 1987 seasons. It was not shown that he bet against his own team. 3) No evidence was discovered that Rose bet against the Cincinnati Reds. But by the rules of MLB, that was irrelevant, as any kind of bet is prohibited.
Yes, he admitted in 2004, after almost 15 years of denials, he had placed bets on baseball, but he insisted it was only as a manager.
- Positions: Outfielder, First Baseman and Third Baseman Bats: Both. Throws: Right 5-11, 192lb (180cm, 87kg) Born: April 14, 1941 in Cincinnati, OH us. High School: Western Hills HS (Cincinnati, OH) Debut: April 8, 1963 (Age 21-359d, 9,679th in MLB history) vs.
- Pete Rose privately admitted to Bud Selig in 2002 and publicly admitted in 2004 that he bet on games while he was the Reds manager, and it was shown in 2015 he bet.
- Dowd discovered that Pete Rose was betting on not only baseball but on he bet on other sports like basketball, hockey, and football. He also found that Pete was betting close to $2,000 a game. The investigation also uncovered that Rose had lost close to $70k in.
But new documents obtained by Outside the Lines indicate Rose bet extensively on baseball -- and on the Cincinnati Reds -- as he racked up the last hits of a record-smashing career in 1986. The documents go beyond the evidence presented in the 1989 Dowd report that led to Rose's banishment and provide the first written record that Rose bet while he was still on the field.
'This does it. This closes the door,' said John Dowd, the former federal prosecutor who led MLB's investigation.
The documents are copies of pages from a notebook seized from the home of former Rose associate Michael Bertolini during a raid by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in October 1989, nearly two months after Rose was declared permanently ineligible by Major League Baseball. Their authenticity has been verified by two people who took part in the raid, which was part of a mail fraud investigation and unrelated to gambling. For 26 years, the notebook has remained under court-ordered seal and is currently stored in the National Archives' New York office, where officials have declined requests to release it publicly.
Pete Rose Betting On Baseball
Rose, through his lawyer, Raymond Genco, issued a statement: 'Since we submitted the application earlier this year, we committed to MLB that we would not comment on specific matters relating to reinstatement. I need to maintain that. To be sure, I'm eager to sit down with [MLB commissioner Rob] Manfred to address my entire history -- the good and the bad -- and my long personal journey since baseball. That meeting likely will come sometime after the All-Star break. Therefore at this point, it's not appropriate to comment on any specifics.' Bertolini's lawyer, Nicholas De Feis, said his client is 'not interested in speaking to anyone about these issues.'
Dowd, who reviewed the documents at Outside the Lines' request, said his investigators had tried but failed to obtain Bertolini's records, believing they would be the final piece in their case that Rose was betting with mob-connected bookmakers in New York. Dowd and his team had sworn testimony from bookie Ron Peters that Rose bet on the Reds from 1984 through 1986, but not written documentation. Dowd also had testimony and a recorded phone conversation between Bertolini and another Rose associate, Paul Janszen, that established that Bertolini had placed bets for Rose. But Dowd never had the kind of documents that could cement that part of his case, especially in the eyes of fans who wanted to see Rose returned to Major League Baseball.
'We knew that [Bertolini] recorded the bets, and that he bet himself, but we never had his records. We tried to get them. He refused to give them to us,' Dowd said. 'This is the final piece of the puzzle on a New York betting operation with organized crime. And, of course, [Rose] betting while he was a player.'
The documents obtained by Outside the Lines, which reflect betting records from March through July 1986, show no evidence that Rose, who was a player-manager in 1986, bet against his team. They provide a vivid snapshot of how extensive Rose's betting life was in 1986:
• In the time covered in the notebook, from March through July, Rose bet on at least one MLB team on 30 different days. It's impossible to count the exact number of times he bet on baseball games because not every day's entries are legible.
• But on 21 of the days it's clear he bet on baseball, he gambled on the Reds, including on games in which he played.
• Most bets, regardless of sport, were about $2,000. The largest single bet was $5,500 on the Boston Celtics, a bet he lost.
• Rose bet heavily on college and professional basketball, losing $15,400 on one day in March. That came during his worst week of the four-month span, when he lost $25,500.
Dowd said he wished he'd had the Bertolini notebook in 1989, but he didn't need it to justify Rose's banishment. Under MLB Rule 21, 'Any player, umpire, or club or league official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.'
But Rose's supporters have based part of their case for his reinstatement on his claim that he never bet while he was a player or against his team, saying that sins he committed as a manager shouldn't diminish what he did as a player.
'The rule says, if you bet, it doesn't say for or against. It's another device by Pete to try to excuse what he did,' Dowd said. 'But when he bet, he was gone. He placed his financial interest ahead of the Reds, period.'
The timing for Rose, who played in 72 games in 1986, isn't great. In March of this year, he applied to Manfred for reinstatement. Dowd recently met with MLB CIO and executive vice president of administration John McHale Jr., who is leading Manfred's review of Rose's reinstatement request, to walk McHale through his investigation. On Monday morning, MLB officials declined to comment about the notebook.
In April, Rose repeated his denial, this time on Michael Kay's ESPN New York 98.7 FM radio show, that he bet on baseball while he was a player. 'Never bet as a player: That's a fact,' he said.
Outside the Lines tracked down two of the postal inspectors who conducted the raid on Bertolini's home in 1989 and asked them to review the documents. Both agents, former supervisor Craig Barney and former inspector Mary Flynn, said the records were indeed copies of the notebook they seized.
When the case began, it didn't look particularly enticing, Barney said. The postal inspector's office in Brooklyn, New York, had received a complaint that a man in Staten Island had failed to return goods to paying customers that he was supposed to have autographed. The man's name was Michael Bertolini, and the business he ran out of his home was called Hit King Marketing Inc.
'It was a mere 'failure to render [services]' complaint,' said Barney, who is now retired. 'We didn't know anything about Bertolini or his connection [to Rose].'
If the accusation was true, it would constitute mail fraud, but the agents had no probable cause to search Bertolini's house.
Barney sent an agent to drive by the address. There was a for sale sign out front, the agent told him. So Barney and Flynn, posing as a couple looking for a home, called a real estate agent and were given a guided tour of Bertolini's house. 'It was such a mess. There was stuff everywhere,' Barney said.
Bats, balls, books and papers were scattered all over. It looked to them as if Bertolini had been signing memorabilia with the forged names of some of the most famous baseball players in history: Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Duke Snider, Mike Schmidt and Pete Rose. 'It reeked of fraud,' Barney said.
The two inspectors spotted an item that a complainant said had not been returned. That gave them probable cause to seek a search warrant.
On Oct. 13, a few days after the undercover house tour and after obtaining a search warrant, they searched Bertolini's home and found evidence that would lead to numerous convictions. But one item stood out: In a box of papers in the basement, Barney said, was a spiral notebook filled with handwritten entries.
It was immediately clear that the many notations of 'PETE' in the pages represented Pete Rose.
'There were numbers and dates and -- it was a book for sports betting,' Barney said. 'I was taken aback.'
Flynn, who said her first reaction was 'Holy mackerel,' said they asked Bertolini about the notebook.
'He wasn't forthcoming with much information,' she said, 'but he did acknowledge to me it was records of bets he made for Pete Rose.'
Bertolini offered his take on the raid during his sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn six years later (he served 14 months for tax fraud and a concurrent assault sentence):
'I got a call at the place where I was working at the time from my brother, and he says, 'You should come home.' He said, 'There's a bunch of government people here, and they're here for you.' At the time, I think it was Mary Flynn of the postal inspector's office who got on the phone and said, 'We're here,' and she told me why and so forth. They took any records I had whatsoever, and they took different personal belongings and memorabilia from my home.'
Although the 1989 raid on Bertolini's house received immediate news coverage, nothing about a betting book became public for five years. After Bertolini pleaded guilty and received a federal prison sentence, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times, ESPN and other news organizations filed freedom of information requests with the U.S. Attorney's Office seeking access to the book. All were denied on the grounds that the notebook had been introduced as a grand jury exhibit and contained information 'concerning third parties who were not of investigative interest.'
Last year, Outside the Lines again applied unsuccessfully for access to the notebook but learned it had been transferred to the National Archives under a civil action titled 'United States v. One Executive Tools Spiral Notebook.' Two small boxes of other items confiscated in the postal raid on Bertolini's house went too, including autographed baseballs and baseball cards.
In April, Outside the Lines examined the Bertolini memorabilia kept in the National Archives' New York office, but the betting book -- held apart from everything else -- was off-limits. The U.S. Attorney's Office internal memorandum from 2000 that requested the spiral notebook's transfer said Bertolini's closed file has 'sufficient historical or other value to warrant its continued preservation by the United States Government.' The memorandum listed among its attachments a copy of the notebook, but a copy of the memorandum provided by the National Archives had no attachments and had a section redacted.
'I wish I had been able to use it [the book] all those years he was denying he bet on baseball,' said Flynn, the former postal inspector. 'He's a liar.'
To Dowd, one of the most compelling elements of the newly uncovered evidence is that it supports the charge that Rose was betting with mob-connected bookies through Bertolini. Dowd's investigation had established that Rose was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt at the time he was banished from the game.
'Bertolini nails down the connection to organized crime on Long Island and New York. And that is a very powerful problem,' Dowd said. '[Ohio bookie] Ron Peters is a golf pro, so he's got other occupations. But the boys in New York are about breaking arms and knees.
'The implications for baseball are terrible. [The mob] had a mortgage on Pete while he was a player and manager.'
Freelance researcher Liam Quinn contributed to this report.
I have taught a variety of sports law courses in the past seven years. Every semester, when my lecture turns to sports gambling, I get some form of this question:
“But what about Pete Rose? He only bet on his team to win. What’s wrong with that?”
The gist of my response: A lot is wrong with that.
The case of Pete Rose remains an enduring scandal 25 years after the Cincinnati Reds player and manager agreed to a lifetime ban from Major League Baseball on August 23, 1989. In 2014, the conversation about him often harkens back to images of Rose’s grit and on-field excellence during the 1970s. Rose, now 73, seemingly remains hopeful of being reinstated into the sport, despite a life in “exile” that was recently explored by Tyler Kepner in the New York Times. Many pundits support him in that hope.
But MLB commissioner Bud Selig’s review of Rose’s application for readmission to the game has remained under review at least a decade. Selig is set to retire as commissioner in January 2015 and has given no indication that a re-evaluation of Rose is imminent.
Despite the goodwill towards Rose, his transgression in betting on games remains as serious today as it was in 1989. Which is to say, very serious.
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In my classes, with frequent citations to John Dowd’s comprehensive 1989 report investigating the scandal, I explain why the uncertainty of outcome inherent in honestly competitive sport disappears when players and coaches bet on the games they are involved in—even if such wagers are only “to win.” I also read the following excerpt from Michael Sokolove’s textured biography of Rose:
Betting on the game is baseball’s ultimate taboo because it has the potential, as nothing else does, of wrecking the sport … It calls into question the integrity of the competition, our faith that the winner will be determined by the best efforts of each player on the field.
My classroom exchanges on the topic, reflective of the Pete Rose debate that persists today, usually proceed as follows (my students’ typical questions and objections are in bold).
Pete Rose only bet on the Reds to win when he was the team’s manager. He believed in his club. How can that justify lifetime banishment from baseball?
Major League Baseball Rule 21(d) is clear. Here is the relevant portion:
Any player, umpire, or club or league official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.
But rules in baseball are selectively enforced all the time—just look at what happened with the pick-up-the-rug-and-repeatedly-sweep steroid debacle. Pete Rose didn’t throw games like the Chicago White Sox players did in the 1919 World Series. Rose always tried to win when he managed the Cincinnati Reds. What is wrong with that? Look: Footnote #3 of the Dowd Report is clear on this point.
No evidence was discovered that Rose bet against the Cincinnati Reds.
But he didn’t bet on the Reds to win every game.
What do you mean?
Rose’s betting slips, written in his own handwriting, as well as other evidence, indicate that he only bet on certain Reds’ games.
Why does that matter? He may not have been betting on all the games, but he still wanted to win every game.
It matters for two reasons. First, when Rose did not bet on the Reds, his inaction was a signal to his bookies that he wasn’t very confident in that game. Those bookies may have used this inside information to place a bet against the Reds. This doesn’t mean the game was fixed, but is reflective of Rose’s state of mind. He was compromised. Second, his wager on certain games, but not others, may have influenced the way he made decisions as a manager.
What do you mean?
If he had a wager on that night’s game, he could be more inclined to burn through his bullpen in a less-than-optimal way. He may have used pinch hitters and pinch runners differently. In an all-out-effort to win a single wagered-upon game, he could, in turn, be sacrificing the team’s chances in a number of future games. Similarly, in games where he didn’t bet at all, he may rest certain players so they are fresh in the next game, when he was wagering on the Reds.
Let’s just assume he did wager on each and every game. Then what he did is okay, right?
No, it’s still problematic from an integrity standpoint. Even if Rose were to have bet on every game throughout the entire season, he probably didn’t always wager the exact same amount on each game.
So what? The amount he bet shouldn’t matter. He was always betting the Reds to win.
Differing bet amounts are telling. If he bet $100 one game and $1,000 another game, what message is he telling his team? Or his bookie? Or himself? It shows he had fluid levels of confidence in certain games versus others. This distinction is important. For example, according to John Dowd, when certain Reds’ pitchers took the mound, Rose didn’t bet at all.
You can’t tell me what Pete Rose did is any different than the CEO of a big publicly traded company who has stock options and bonuses based on share price or other performance metrics.
I’ll try. The CEO hypothetical is distinguishable. CEO compensation schemes and employment agreements are transparent. They are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Those who are interested can read them. Illegal sports gambling is the complete opposite. Rose didn’t disclose his bets for fans, bookies, or other gamblers to absorb prior to the game’s first pitch. He only told his runner. Read this from Page Two of the Dowd Report:
Gambling is conducted in secret by its participants. Normally little is recorded and what is written down is destroyed shortly after payment of the wager. Payments are often made in cash by runners between the bookmaker and the gambler because cash is fungible and difficult to trace.
All of this was 25 years ago. Isn’t that long enough? Rose has recanted and apologized.
He has, but it took a while. He spent 15 years denying he ever bet on baseball. In an effort to sell his 2004 book, Rose finally admitted that he had. His August 23, 1989 agreement with MLB allowed him to apply for reinstatement after a one-year period.
How could he explain away his baseball gambling in his application for reinstatement?
He would have to come up with something different than some form of the “I only bet on the Reds to win” explanation. For this type of mea culpa to “work,” he would have had to (i) transparently bet on (ii) every Reds game for (iii) exactly the same amount. This did not happen. The first part of the Dowd Report included a powerful paragraph addressing the seriousness of gambling by game participants:
Betting on baseball by a participant of the game is corrupt because it erodes and destroys the integrity of the game of baseball. Betting also exposes the game to the influence of forces who seek to control the game to their own ends. Betting on one's own team gives rise to the ultimate conflict of interest in which the individual player/bettor places his personal financial interest above the interests of the team.
Pete Rose Betting
Well, despite all this, Rose should still be in the Hall of Fame for what he did as a player. He is the all-time hit king—no one else will ever get to 4,256. He has to be in the Hall of Fame!
Pete Rose Betting Slips
Then he shouldn’t have bet.