Chicago Sun-Times: Expert: Baseball ignoring 'serious' gambling problem

Given the chance 14 years ago to admit he had bet on baseball games, Pete Rose lied to baseball's commissioner. He says now in his book -- My Prison Without Bars, due out Thursday -- that he did so because he didn't have anyone to confess to who could help him.

I should have had the opportunity to get help," he writes in the book, excerpted this week in Sports Illustrated, but baseball had no fancy rehab for gamblers like they do for drug addicts."

This could be the next part of Rose's legacy: an analysis of what Major League Baseball does for compulsive gamblers.

If he would have come forth and said he had a gambling problem, we'd have helped him," former commissioner Fay Vincent said Monday on WSCR-AM.

But compulsive gambling expert Arnie Wexler agrees with Rose that baseball isn't doing its part. Wexler, who has spoken with several professional athletes and given clinics at colleges, said the gambling problem in sports is serious and not limited to Rose.

They know it," he said of baseball officials, but they have their heads in the sand. It's very prevalent."

Wexler said one major professional league hired him to go from team to team and discuss the seriousness of gambling. He would conduct a survey of the athletes, but that league wanted to see the questions in advance.

We were dumb enough to give them the questions," he said. And then the president of the league said, No way."'

That president was afraid word would get to reporters that the league was worried about gambling.

Wexler said baseball and other sports need to treat gambling as a sickness and not a crime. But they are so afraid of public response to the possibility that games are being thrown by gamblers that they try to hide the problem. In the end, he said, that only leads to more gambling problems.

The league is addicted to gambling itself because they don't understand the addiction," he said. What they need to do is give real education to what this addiction is all about. They need to address the issue, and if they're smart, they'll send Rose to a treatment center."