Sporting News, The: Call Charlie the Hustler's bluff - Pete Rose's gambling may not keep him out of

Pete Rose knows Ty Cobb's cap size. "Seven and 5/8ths." First room service bill? "1963, $12.75." Had 71 hits off Phil Niekro, 41 off Joe Niekro. "I wish Mrs. Niekro had had another son." On Joe DiMaggio: "I played in more wins than DiMaggio played games." The night of his 2,000th hit: "Took Cobb this long to get to 1,861."

Or so Rose says. He loves numbers. Every morning, at the breakfast table, his first wife watched Rose figuring his averages and records. "He never grew up," she said.

Even when he was the humming engine of the Big Red Machine, the perpetual kid Peter Edward Rose had a gambling thing. He had it before anyone outside New Haven knew about the avenging angel Bart Giamatti, before we knew he would watch the 1990 World Series in prison.

He talked basketball point spreads and asked what you thought about the Super Bowl. He loved Al Capone stories. "If you wanted an autograph from the Big Guy," Rose said, "you better not go inside your pocket for the pen." And: "Wouldn't you have liked to meet the Big Guy? He'd have had to give you a tip on a horse or something, wouldn't he?"

Rose's father was a Cincinnati sandlot-football legend still crushing bones at age 42. He told the boy, "Watch Country Slaughter," because Enos Slaughter ran out everything, even walks. What a player Rose became, first mocked as "Charlie Hustle" by players who preferred not to be shown up while sitting on their hind ends. But the name stuck, and by relentless work Rose gave it authenticity beyond its simple conjuring of a game's values.

How sad now that Rose by relentless misbehavior has allowed the name to be used against him again. Now he's a hustler, smarmy division.

Give him this, though: He still can see the ball spinning. He saw it in the trifecta of MasterCard, Jim Gray and NBC Sports. First Major League Baseball sold out to the credit-card people, paroling Rose from its pariah list for a place on the All-Century ballot. Then Gray and NBC confirmed for millions of fans Rose's self-view as victim.

With those fat pitches floating toward him, Rose has taken a full cut. Whether baseball recognizes it or not, this is a public relations war. And Rose is winning in a rout.

It's time for baseball to call his bluff. Schedule a public hearing and send a limousine for. Rose because it's long past time for the hustler to put up or shut up.

And Rose should know this: Johnnie Cochran/O.J. torturing of technicalities will not do. It's time to get past the weasel words, evasions and other lies. Rose needs to present new evidence of exoneration or live with the exile he bargained for and accepted 10 years ago. Then we'll see if Rose wants more of John Dowd in his face.

One thinking reader has an intriguing idea. It's too inflammatory by a ton, but wouldn't it be fun? Listen:

"Do you think a public trial such as the Scopes `monkey trial' could ever happen in baseball? Not likely, I know, but why not have baseball announce a Pete Rose trial to be televised? Let a jury decide the case based on all the facts as gathered by baseball and by Rose's lawyers."

The reader stopped short of proposing an Atlantic City casino as the courtroom for this Trial of the Century. But you could bet that Rose would like the venue. During recesses, he could-slip over to a blackjack table.

It's astounding, what's happening. There's a feeling in our gambling-swamp culture that even if Rose bet on Reds games while managing the team, it's no big deal. He bet on them to win, didn't he? And if that gambling is for some silly reason against the rules, isn't 10 years punishment enough?

Rose bet on baseball--I believe that. He knew it was the ultimate crime because it eats away at the game while drugs eat only the man. Yet he bet with both hands, a serial offender with a habit that even he once acknowledged to be evidence of addiction.

Baseball's investigation of Rose produced written records by sleazebags, low-lifers and assorted white trash, none of them ever mistaken for the Big Guy. Those records, printed in the Dowd Report, show that Rose made 189 bets on major league games from April 8 to May 12 of 1987.

That's not one bet, that's 189 bets, 27 of them on the Reds. The money involved: $455,200, Rose winning $200,600 and losing $254,600. And that's for one five-week period. Baseball's investigators also reported Rose bet on games before and after those dates, including his time as a player/manager. There's little reason to doubt any of this, plenty of reason to believe it all.

Numbers? Rose told Dowd he don't know nothin' about no lousy numbers. What a curiosity. A man knows Ty Cobb's cap size, but he knows nothing about 189 bets worth $455,200.

On Rose's new website, an "interview" includes a stooge's question claiming that baseball suspended Cobb for a year on gambling allegations. If anyone knows that such a suspension never happened, it's a man who claims he knows the date of Cobb's 1,861st hit.

Yet Rose says, "I'm glad he was (out) because I'd have had a hard time beating that record if he'd had another year. But I'd have found a way."

Such gall.

Dave Kindred is a contributing writer for THE SPORTING NEWS. Look for additional commentary from Dave weekdays at sportingnews.com and on AOL (keyword: TSN).