With Bud Selig gone as MLB commissioner, many expected Rose’s reinstatement to be a sure thing, but now evidence in the form of a long lost notebook has broke open the Pete Rose betting scandal again and it’s quite damning.
ESPN’S ‘Outside The Lines’ reports on evidence found in the notebook during his record-breaking 1986 season with the Cincinnati Reds. Rose was a player coach at the time, and for years Rose has insisted that while he did bet on games he never did so while playing on the team.
The notebook had been seized from a former betting associate of Rose, Michael Bertolini, during a 1989 U.S Postal Service inspection raid–the same year Rose was banned from MLB.
Rose issued the following statement on the discovery through his lawyer, via ESPN:
“Since we submitted the application earlier this year, we committed to MLB that we would not comment on specific matters relating to reinstatement. I need maintain that. To be sure, I’m is eager to sit down with [MLB commissioner Rob] Manfred to address my entire history — the good and the bad — and my long personal journey since baseball. That meeting likely will come sometime after the All-Star break. Therefore at this point, it’s not appropriate to comment on any specifics.” Bertolini’s lawyer, Nicholas De Feis, said his client is “not interested in speaking to anyone about these issues.”
The final ‘piece in the puzzle’ as prosecutor John Dowd refers to it, was obtaining actual betting records linking Rose to Bertolini in a large mob-connected bookmaker ring.
“We knew that [Bertolini] recorded the bets, and that he bet himself, but we never had his records. We tried to get them. He refused to give them to us,” Dowd said. “This is the final piece of the puzzle on a New York betting operation with organized crime. And, of course, [Rose] betting while he was a player.”
It’s important to note that none of the evidence found by OTL revealed that Rose at any point bet against the Reds.
