Pete Rose is in the news once again discussing PEDs and his lifetime suspension with baseball, as if you really wants to know what he thinks about the situation. In an interview with John Phillips of 93.7 The Fan in Pittsburgh, Rose says that instead of betting on baseball, which got him a lifetime banishment from the game, he should have picked up alcohol, or drugs, or beaten his wife. Wait, what?!
"I should have picked alcohol. I should have picked drugs or I should have picked up beating up my wife or girlfriend because if you do those three, you get a second chance. They haven’t given too many gamblers a second chances in the world of baseball."
The Hit King wasn't done. He also takes exception with being compared to his fellow players banned for life for gambling on baseball, Shoeless Joe Jackson and the 1919 Black Sox.
"I don’t like to be compared to Joe Jackson. because Joe Jackson, I think, took money to throw World Series games. Well, I know I bet on my own team to win. There’s pretty much a big difference there, but both of us were wrong.”
The concept of "Jackson threw the series!" is one that's been beaten to death, and since all the major players involved are dead, we'll have no idea what the truth actually is. But in that infamous 1919 World Series, Jackson hit .375/.394/.563 in the eight games, far and away the best hitting line for any White Sox player during the series. It just reeks of hypocrisy for Rose to try to distance himself from a player that was barred for life by association unlike Rose, who the commissioner's office had mountains of proof against and has admitted to his role in gambling in the present day.
Rose needs to go back in his hole. The man really has nothing interesting to say anymore, and is just beating the same damn drum over and over again.
[CBS Pittsburgh via The Score]
