Pete Rose’s apologies have come in bunches during this week of his official confession that he bet on baseball.
Truly contrite or not, he has gone from apologizing for gambling on his own game as a manager to apologizing to 2004 Hall of Fame inductees Dennis Eckersley and Paul Molitor for intruding on their big day with all the publicity surrounding the release of his mea culpa book.
The publicity drum was beating ever louder Thursday, the book’s official release date, as ABC’s “PrimeTime Thursday” aired a highly promoted interview with Rose, taped last month, in which he admitted betting on baseball.
He also submitted to a 30-minute interview with the Associated Press in New York and began his book tour with a signing in Ridgewood, N.J., where he asked more than 200 fans not to judge him before reading the book, “Pete Rose: My Prison Without Bars.”
In the AP interview, Rose spoke of the price he has paid as a baseball outcast since he was banned from the game in 1989.
“It cost me my dignity, it cost me my respect, it cost me a lot of money, it cost me a managerial job with the Cincinnati Reds,” Rose said. “I mean, it cost me everything. But I’ve been able to survive simply because of the fan support that I’ve received over the years.”
Rose attempted to refute criticism from former Reds teammate Joe Morgan, a Hall of Famer, who said Rose’s admission was both long overdue and insincere because it came in a book with a profit motive attached.
“I didn’t do this book for money, I did the book to explain myself,” Rose said. “The people who don’t like it will say, `You’re selling your confession.’ I confessed 14 months ago [to Commissioner Bud Selig].
“Now [I’m] coming clean, and it’s not good enough. It’s not right. How can I win if people aren’t going to be fair with me?”
In its first day on the market Thursday, Rose’s book moved up to No. 18 among Amazon.com’s top 100 books.
While first-day sales numbers from major booksellers were unavailable, Steven Zeitchik, news editor at industry trade magazine Publishers Weekly, said, “If it’s going to be a bestseller, it needs to do the bulk of its sales up front and quickly.”
With an ambitious initial printing of 500,000 copies, “a publisher wants advance publicity to create demand for this book as soon as it goes on sale,” said Charlotte Abbott, book news editor at Publishers Weekly.
“It’s typical of publishers to schedule advance publicity in the form of excerpts and exclusive interviews.”
Those strategies were fulfilled in this week’s issue of Sports Illustrated and Rose’s ABC interview with Charles Gibson.
“It would be unreasonable to expect there would not be publicity before then,” Abbott said.
Scott Waxman, Rose’s agent, insisted that the timing of the book’s release, the Sports Illustrated excerpt and the ABC interview were planned to follow, not precede, the Hall of Fame announcement. The flap and ill will generated by the intrusion of Rose-mania “was unanticipated and unintended,” Waxman said.
Rose seemed tired of the topic.
“It seems like no matter what I do, it’s wrong,” he said. “If I waited till March, I’d have been interfering with spring training. If I waited till the All-Star Game, I’m trying to take away from the All-Star Game.
“I would never, never in my life do anything to distract anybody from going to the Hall of Fame.”
Not everybody was critical of the timing of the book’s release.
“If I were a publisher, I would have chosen the same week to release this book,” said Lynn Goldberg, a book publicist with Goldberg McDuffie Communications.
“I would try to capitalize on the attention for the Hall of Fame voting without detracting from it.
“Is it the worst thing in the world that this book overshadowed the Hall of Fame vote? Would the two inductees have been on David Letterman otherwise?”
By admitting he bet on baseball, Rose met one condition Selig said was essential before he’d consider reinstatement.
Rose told the AP he’d do “anything they say” to gain reinstatement, but wouldn’t guarantee that he’d refrain from gambling altogether.
“They also have to understand that one of my means of entertainment is periodically going to the races,” he said.
Rose said he was hopeful a reinstatement would include clearance to resume working in baseball.
“I don’t know if they would ever say, `We’ll reinstate you, but you can’t work in baseball’ . . . I don’t think that’s the American way, I really don’t,” he said.
Still, taking his rightful place in Cooperstown appears to be Rose’s main objective. A media favorite throughout his years in baseball, Rose is optimistic that voters will give him just consideration.
“The writers are fair . . . I think the writers understand that I understand that I made a mistake and that I’m sorry I made that mistake,” he said.
His perceived lack of contrition, in the book and in his ABC interview, was another point Rose sought to clarify in speaking to AP.
“I’m kind of surprised that people are jumping the gun before they read the book,” he said. “I thought I was remorseful when I needed to be remorseful in there . . . It’s hard to be remorseful on paper. You know, talking to you or talking into a camera, it’s a lot easier to be remorseful because you can look at me and hear my tone and things like that.
“And I felt the load was taken off my shoulders 14 months ago when I was able to tell Bud Selig the same thing that’s in the book.
“To be honest, when I left Bud’s office that day, I had a real good feeling. I thought I was going to be reinstated before the book came out.”
