Banned For Life For Gambling

    The above words in the title to this essay are the words that are affixed to baseball legend Pete Rose, who died last Monday at the age of 83. Not “The Hit King”—for his Major League Baseball record 4,256 base hits—or his nickname “Charlie Hustle.” Not as a 17-time All-Star. Not as the player who made the All-Star team at FIVE different positions. Not as the fierce soul of the iconic 1970s Cincinnati team known as the Big Red Machine. Not as the legend going airborne in those headfirst belly-flop slides. He’s not even being remembered for the horrid parts of his life; the accusations of statutory rape, which he denied (and later settled out of court), as well as his years of living very hard and sometimes, very ugly. 

    He was a sports star of the 1970s with a dopey haircut, a desire to be the best and out-hustle everyone else, and also could indulge in every temptation. His temptation, and his addiction of choice (if it can be called a choice) was gambling. Betting on baseball as the Cincinnatti Reds manager was his sin, and the late commissioner Angelo Bartlett Giamatti was determined to drive gambling from the sport, even if that meant banning Rose for life.

    Coming to baseball after a stint as the youngest president in the history of Yale University, Giamatti saw his job as warding off those who would vandalize baseball’s place in the American fabric. He was a dramatic figure—the father of actor Paul Giamatti—and unafraid of the big gesture. On a personal note, I was elated when Giamatti was named baseball’s commish. This guy received his doctorate in 1964 from Yale, when he also published a column of essays by Thomas G. Bergin, the great scholar of Italian literature. He was a professor of comparative literature at Yale and also taught briefly at Princeton. His literary focus was on English Renaissance literature and its relationship with Italian Renaissance poets. He was also president of Yale from 1978 to 1986. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1980 and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1982. I had visions of Giamatti making every baseball player read things like Moby Dick, as well as The Iliad, and the Odyssey! This guy was a sports commissoner a dope like me could look up to. It’s quite possible he was the most brilliant commissioner baseball has had or ever will have. And then, because life just sucks sometimes, he had to deal with Pete Rose. In the end, he banished Rose from the game that he loved and dominated, and also shamed.  

When Giamatti died of a heart attack at age 51 in 1989, friends said that the stress of banning Rose played a role in his early death. Giamatti’s dear friend Fay Vincent succeeded him, and he saw sustaining Rose’s lifetime banishment as a duty to Giamatti’s legacy. Rose never helped his case by issuing denials for decades that he bet on baseball. He only admitted it 30 years later as a gambit to finally get into the Hall of Fame. This last effort to fulfill his dream of taking a place in Cooperstown failed, and the lifetime ban would remain.

    Today, we’ve come to understand Rose’s compulsion to bet on anything and everything, including baseball, as a function of addiction. Rose, however unsavory the allegations about his personal life, was a gambling addict. He needed Major League Baseball to direct him to treatment and eventually offer him an open, transparent path back into the game he loved. Instead, the league preferred him to be a living warning to players. 

    I found an old interview with Rose that was done a decade ago for Sirius/XM radio from a Las Vegas convention-center hallway, outside a room where he was signing memorabilia. He said that later in the day he would be hitting the tables. What was memorable was how caffeinated the interviewer said Rose was—hyper, funny, ingratiating, and clearly an experienced spinner of yarns. One could easily see him at corporate retreats, celebrity golf courses, and rubber-chicken dinners charming crowds for a paycheck. After his ban, Charlie Hustle was really about that hustle, agreeing to attend countless baseball autograph shows and grabbing for any payday. He discovered an outlaw infamy and sustained his damaged ego by basking in the adoration of his defenders. 

    The other part of the interview I’ll never forget occurred when Rose was asked what he might be doing if he had never been banned, and he said, “I never would have left the sport. I don’t care if I was just an old guy sitting on the bench giving my two cents. But that’s where I would be.”     

    He then launched into a soliloquy about his favorite current players and the advice he’d give them. He didn’t speak with bitterness about his absence from those spaces. He sounded alive and thrilled to be talking baseball, breaking down complex ideas about player development in language even a dope like me could understand.

    Then, suddenly, he sounded heart-wrenchingly sad, and he finished the interview talking about yearning to get back in the game. Maybe it was a sympathy-seeking con from a guy always looking for an angle. But I imagined him sadly looking around that cavernous convention center, wearing an out-of-style sport coat in a city that serves up adrenaline and alienation in equal helpings: Willy Loman with poker chips.

    I think he was, for a moment, imagining himself in his familiar polyester uniform, feeling the sweaty line on the brim of his baseball hat, and that he mourned a loss. For those who see in Rose a cautionary tale or simply loathe him for the sneering arrogance of his younger years, such an ending could be considered fate just doing its job for someone who trespassed against the national pastime. But understanding gambling as an addiction matters, and that creates a different kind of cautionary tale. Rose risked what he cared about most in this world, and came out on the losing end. Gambling can develop into an addiction just like smoking or drinking, where you itch without the (figurative or literal) dice in your hands.

    You, dear reader, may not agree, but I think this matters now because the same sports world that banned Rose, with the haughty air of a pope excommunicating an inveterate sinner, is now awash in gambling. Our smartphones have become portable sportsbooks, and the leagues have reaped Billions of dollars (for those of you on the West Coast, that's Billions, with a capital "B") from the industry. Broadcasts are flooded with ads. Members of the sports media we are supposed to trust are giving out betting lines during highlight shows. And now, brazenly, even athletes like NBA stars LeBron James and Kevin Durant are featured in gambling advertisements. The NBA happily profits from this, even though the league banned a player, Jontay Porter, just last year for betting on these gambling apps. It ruined his young career. Porter and Rose are two examples of the countless people, especially young fans, becoming addicts thanks to widespread legalized sports betting.

    The sports leagues have also, while peddling addiction, been PR-conscious enough to offer phone numbers for those who cannot escape its grasp. Forgive me if I find this just a little hypocritical. And a new generation of addicts is now seeking help in shockingly record numbers.

    As for Rose, in this orgy of gambling and addiction, Major League Baseball continued to use him as a symbol: warning players, coaches, and referees that, while the world may be betting on their games, they are to resist all temptations. You can advertise gambling, just not partake, or you’ll end up like Rose: a tragic figure with his nose pressed up against the class, sadly looking in. This is wrong. I mean, why not just encourage a raging, recovering alcoholic to host wine-tasting parties! Rose should be remembered as an example not only of the perils of gambling addiction but also why the leagues’ embrace of this revenue stream makes them predatory hypocrites. Maybe, if we had a different discussion about Rose’s addiction 35 years ago, perhaps this epidemic the sports world has unleashed could have been avoided.  

    Look, I’m not trying to exonerate Rose. I know a little bit about sports, and I know how bad gambling on one’s own sport is. And let’s be honest, he was an awful human being during his post-career life. But (and there’s always a ‘But’), I’m also quite familiar with the human frailty known as addiction. And if, in fact, we’re going to go down this road as a society, of labeling things like drinking, taking drugs, sex, gambling…whatever, as addictions, maybe it’s time to revisit certain punishments. I'm all in that there still needs to be some type of punishments, but there also needs to be a rehabilitative process in sports like there is in other aspects of business/society. As for me, I’d like to see Rose in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The guy is one of the greatest baseball players EVER. And that's not even a conversation. Again, he has more hits than any other player has, and no one is ever going to come close to that record, as well as all of the other accolades I mentioned in the first paragraph. Yes, he broke baseball’s cardinal rule; he bet on the game while playing/managing. Guilty as charged. So put this on his plaque: “Pete Rose: The Greatest Hitter that Baseball Has Ever Known. Pete Rose: A Piece of Shit Human Being Who Bet On Baseball While Playing/Managing.” Or something like that. 

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com