Vincent disputes Rose's latest version
There's a problem with Pete Rose's assertion this week that he bet on the Cincinnati Reds nightly while he managed the club, according to Fay Vincent, the commissioner who banned Rose from baseball for his gambling habit.
"It's just not true," Vincent said by telephone from his home in Florida earlier this week. "He didn't bet on the team when Mario Soto was pitching or when Bill Gullickson was pitching. He didn't think they were going to win."
John Dowd, the former Justice Department attorney who conducted the Rose investigation and wrote the 1989 report that led to Rose's banishment from baseball, corroborated Vincent's account.
"When Soto and Gullickson pitched, he didn't bet on the Reds," Dowd told John Erardi of the Cincinnati Enquirer. "We only put in the report what we could find and corroborate three different ways."
The 65-year-old Rose, who after years of denials finally admitted to betting on baseball in a book he wrote three years ago, made his latest assertions while speaking with Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann on ESPN Radio Wednesday.
"I didn't bet on my team four nights a week," he said. "I bet on my team to win every night because I love my team, I believe in my team. I did everything in my power every night to win that game."
Rose said his assertions were consistent with the findings of the Dowd report. But the record suggests otherwise. The Dowd report said Rose bet on Reds games in 1985 and '86 and that Rose bet on 390 games in all, 52 involving the Reds, over a three-month period in 1987. Dowd said Rose would not bet when Soto pitched, because of concerns about his health, or when Gullickson pitched, evidently because he didn't think he would win.
That was Vincent's belief as well.
Rose wrote a book in 1989 in which he denied he gambled on baseball, then reversed himself 15 years later. Why is he changing his story yet again?
"I think he is desperate to be reinstated," Vincent said. "He's trying to court public support, because he sees there are holes below the water line.
"No one is paying attention. The momentum to reinstate him is dead. And if he thinks [commissioner Bud] Selig is going to reinstate him, no way. He's in a tough spot."
Material from wire services was used in this report; Gordon Edes can be reached at edes@globe.com.
Correction: Because of a reporter's error, a story in yesterday's Sports section incorrectly identified the baseball commissioner who banned Pete Rose from baseball. A. Bartlett Giamatti was commissioner, and Fay Vincent was deputy commissioner, when Rose was banned in 1989 for betting on baseball.
