Put me in the crowd who was interested in reading why Pete Rose lied for 14 years about committing Major League Baseball’s cardinal sin: gambling on the game.
I know it makes me a bit of a sucker, because I was out there on the day the book came out getting “Charlie Hustled” — in skeptics minds, anyway — by the purchase of his new book. So was it worth buying?
In “My Prison Without Bars” the first one third is spent on Pete’s childhood, his love for the horses and racetrack, and how he first got into baseball and not very much at all about his gambling confession. Finally, on page 123 Rose gets to the point where he writes about the first time that he doesn’t even really remember: “Betting on the playoffs makes the games more exciting to watch!” and we are off to the story the book title promises.
At one point in the chapter “Busted” Pete Rose and compares his being caught by baseball for gambling to the troubles former President Clinton had with the Monica Lewinsky scandal: “I like Bill Clinton. He was a confident and charismatic leader. He worked his whole life to become President and he wasn’t going to be taken down over an indiscretion that didn’t affect his job performance. He was a scrapper- — just like me.”
After the pictures in the middle, the book starts to grab the reader much more, where Pete describes his need to get a gambling rush four days a week and more sports stories of the day when he was playing and then later as he got into managing. In fact, Rose is batting 1.000 as a writer when he tells the often humorous stories about his times on the field in baseball. It is during these engaging vignettes that the reader can feel his sense of humor despite the negativity swirling around him. More of these stories would have improved the first third of the book which is a bit slow. At one point Pete writes that he was betting two thousand dollars on a four to eight games daily in the late eighties. You start to learn some things about Pete Rose, and just how much and he was into the gambling during that time, and just how much of a problem he had blurring the lines of right and wrong.
The book also deals with many common stories and questions about his gambling: why didn’t he just tell the truth when the commissioner first asked him about betting on baseball? The authenticity of the alleged Pete Rose betting slips. Whether or not there were intricate hand signals with a gambling associate in the stands during Reds games? Did he bet on games inside the clubhouse? What was his association with the sleazy characters that hung onto him?
The final third of the book deals with his stay in prison for five months and his three months in the halfway house. It doesn’t paint a picture of him just lounging around watching TV but isn’t exactly hardcore prison either. When Pete gets out, he goes through the time leading from 1991 to present detailing why he hasn’t come forward until the release of this book with his confession that he did, indeed, bet on baseball. Pete writes that the Jim Gray interview was a setup and that Gray specifically wasn’t supposed to ask him anything about gambling, which Gray has replied to recently as being “ridiculous.”
For Pete Rose fans, this book will give you a lot of insight into what Pete’s motives were for lying these last 14 years about gambling, as well as a perhaps too long bio about how he got into baseball and his family. Unfortunately, Pete skips over some of the negative things in his personal life like cheating on his wife. Also, the somewhat brief medical explanation for his “medical condition” rings somewhat false to this reader and fan. I think it’s a bit convenient to say that because of some medical condition one is more likely to be obsessed by gambling, and Pete doesn’t really address how with this condition he is still able to gamble without it being problematic on some sports (not baseball, he says) today. Logic would say if one had a medical condition that gambling flared up, then no gambling would be acceptable, not some of it.
Don’t buy this book expecting to believe every word Pete says, because there are parts that ring all too much like fiction instead of non-fiction, but one thing is certain: Pete’s love for the game of baseball. He misses this game and has paid a dear price for gambling on the sport he loved and lying for 14 years about it. Will this book wring some compassion from current commissioner Bud Selig? I think so. He gets into the Hall of Fame, I think, but I am not so sure he’ll ever be let back into baseball as long as he continues to have any association with gambling. Pete said on a recent TV interview that he would sign anything the commissioner asked him to sign about him staying away and never making another bet, but that sounds like a house bet to me.
Fans of Pete Rose will buy this book as I did to read what Pete had to say. Skeptics would best be advised to wait for the paperback or catch the many reviews breaking down the juicy pieces. Grade: C+
