Boastful Rose Lobbies Media For Recognition Banned Former Star Covets Spot In Hall Of Fame

Pete Rose returned to Philadelphia on Thursday night and began a press conference by ranting against the tiny dimensions of some American League parks and boasting that he’d hit 600 homers if he was breaking into the game today.

Then the filibuster ended.

Rose looked out into the assembled media horde and issued a challenge:

“If anyone here would vote against me going into the Hall of Fame, I want them to stand up and tell me why,” he said.

No one moved, possibly out of fear of catching one of Rose’s gaudy cowboy boots - inscribed with the No. 14 - in the backside. Or possibly because Rose is such good copy that it’s just best to let him babble.

Baseball’s all-time hit leader, 17 years removed from leading the Phillies to their only world championship in 114 years of doing business, was in town for the Phillies annual ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) charity function at the Vet.

It’s been almost eight years since Rose, now 56, was banned by the late commissioner Bart Giamatti for allegedly betting on games.

The ban has kept one of the greatest players in the history of the game from gaining entrance to the Hall of Fame.

From day one, Rose emphatically denied betting on baseball. He still does. In fact, he feels his bronze likeness would be hanging on a marble wall in Cooperstown right now if he had picked a different place to live or a different vice with which to occupy his free time.

“I never bet on baseball, nor was it ever found that I did,” he said. “I did bet on football games. But if my hometown was Las Vegas instead of Cincinnati, what I did would have been legal. And if I had been on drugs, I’d have gone through rehab paid for by baseball and I’d still be managing the Reds. I’d hate to think this is going to keep me out of the Hall of Fame forever.”

Rose said he came to Philadelphia at the invitation of Phillies president Bill Giles, the man who recruited him to the Phillies from Cincinnati in 1979. That sounded very much like a violation of his banishment from the game.

Later, Giles clarified his role in the invitation.

“The ALS people sent Pete a letter and asked him to come,” Giles said. “When they hadn’t heard anything, they asked me to give him a call. We cleared it with the commissioner’s office. There was no problem.”

Giles sidestepped the issue of Rose and the Hall of Fame. He straddles a fine line because of his role on baseball’s executive counsel and his affinity for Rose.

“I’m a big Pete Rose fan,” Giles said. “He’s the hardest-working player I’ve ever seen. I love the guy.”

Rose said he believes baseball’s cold war against him will someday melt down. He believes he will someday be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

“It doesn’t matter how long it takes,” he said. “Baseball has to do what it has to do. I’m not bitter. Life is too short to be bitter.

“But when it happens, it will be a great feeling. It’ll probably be like the feeling I had on when I got hit No. 4,192 (breaking Ty Cobb’s major-league record) and received that nine-minute ovation. That gave me a taste of what it might be like.”

The first step to Cooperstown will be applying for reinstatement. Every once in a while he sends out feelers to see if the time is right to apply. Right now it isn’t.

“But it’s getting closer,” Rose said. “For the first time in a long time, baseball has its house in order. I never wanted to send a letter and have someone say they have other things on their mind and have the letter go on the back burner for six months.”

And when Rose does send that letter, he sees no reason why he shouldn’t be reinstated.

“If they’re not going to reinstate me, they better have a good reason why,” he said. “This is a pretty forgiving country, a good country for giving second chances. Shoot, some guys in baseball have had more lives than Morris the Cat.”