Pete Rose Joked About Betting on Baseball With David Letterman

Pete Rose may have been Major League Baseball’s career hits leader but he’ll never make the game’s Hall of Fame. Rose, who died yesterday at 83, blew that chance by gambling on the game he loved. Many believed that if Rose were more contrite, if he’d taken the allegations more seriously, then the sport could have eventually forgiven him. But that wasn’t Rose, who spent his golden years signing autographs outside of Las Vegas casinos and joking about gambling with David Letterman.

On his 2006 appearance on Late Show, Rose claimed he still watched three games a day. With all that knowledge, Letterman said, perhaps the Hit King could provide insights into the upcoming playoff matchups. “Who do you like?”

“You sound like you're betting on baseball,” Rose replied with a devilish grin. The crowd applauded as Rose thumbed his nose at his own sullied reputation. 

Pretty funny joke, Letterman conceded, but the world wanted to know: Did Rose still wager on baseball?

“Honestly I can't because I know too damn much about it,” Rose said with a smirk. “It wouldn’t be fair.” According to The Dowd Report, he had no such concerns when he was the actual manager of the Cincinnati Reds, betting at least $10,000 a day on 52 of the team’s games.

Rose told Letterman he never bet on the game as a player and that his gambling days were over, despite working 15 days out of every month in Las Vegas. “I’m not a casino-type gambler,” he claimed.

Fair enough, said Letterman, but what about all of the baseballs that he autographed with the inscription, “I’m sorry I bet on baseball — Pete Rose”?

“If you want to know the truth, about 15  months ago I signed some balls for a friend of mine in Cooperstown who was going to sit on them for like 10 or 12 years,” explained Rose. Long story short: Some of those balls found their way to auction, and Rose didn’t like other people making money from something he didn’t get paid for. If fans were willing to fork over cash, he figured, he’d sign some more and sell the “apologies” on peterose.com.

“I signed one the other day — ‘I’m sorry I shot JFK,’” Rose joked. 

Then he complained about making headlines for his profiteering. “I’m on the cover of this paper because I signed a baseball 14 months ago. I don’t get it,” he said, demonstrating the same lack of self-awareness that confounded MLB’s management. 

That sums up Rose’s legacy in a nutshell. No one ever doubted his talent. But making jokes about his transgressions — and selling them online — was never going to win him a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame.