12 of 16

Write now Article Tools

What is frequently lost in the debate about Pete Rose is the fact that he was betting very large sums of money and doing so illegally. To put it another way, he was do business with people in Organized Crime, and he wasn't doing it anonymously. His bookie(s) knew that he was taking bets from the manager of the Cincinnati Reds! And to think that the bookie involved wasn't selling the information he received from Rose is nave. If Rose has a standing bet of $1000 on the Reds for every game, I could live with that and even excuse the fact that he was dealing with the kind of people that should be kept away from baseball. But that's not what Rose did; he bet heavily on the Reds sometimes, lightly at other times, and sometimes, he didn't bet at all. And Rose's betting patterns reverberated throughout the illicit betting world. They were the kind of inside tips that big-time gamblers dream of. If Pete Rose is not betting on his own team to win, the odds are pretty good that his team won't win. If Rose has placed a large wager on his team to win, odds are he's going to do everything in his power to see that his team wins. Whether Rose's betting pattern affected the way he did his job is probably a question that cannot be answered, but there is certainly an appearance that Rose was better motivated to win some games and not others.

Learn more about this author, Thos Robert.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Deciding whether Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame?
We want to hear your view. Write now!