http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/oregonian/brian_meehan/index.ssf?/base/sports/1073394260156660.xml"Rose's confession turns me back to a man who embodied the grace and integrity that Rose so recklessly abandoned: Bart Giamatti, scholar, president of Yale and the National League, seventh baseball commissioner.
Giamatti was a poet with his feet on the ground. He loved this silly game and understood its grip on the American imagination. He thought baseball must be bulletproof from betting, which nearly ruined the game in 1919 when the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.
...
And for the next 14 years, Rose waged war against Giamatti and John Dowd, the Washington attorney who built the case against Rose. Dowd's 225-page report detailed 412 instances in the first three months of the 1987 season in which Rose, then manager of the Reds, bet on baseball -- including 52 games when he bet on the Reds.
Now the vapid, self-centered Rose is clearing away the last perceived roadblock to his redemption. Before we carry him on shoulders into the Hall of Fame, let's remember a few things."
http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/oregonian/brian_meehan/index.ssf?/base/sports/1073394260156660.xml