Baseball’s Pete Rose: Gambling Scandal Cost Me $100 Million

deadline.com:

Major League Baseball icon Pete Rose, focus of a new HBO documentary series, says the gambling scandal that got him banned from the game cost him dearly. “You have to understand one thing, ladies and gentlemen,” Rose said at a Q&A after the premiere of episode 1 of Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose, “gambling cost me a hundred million [dollars].

That’s what I’d have made in baseball if I hadn’t got suspended.” In 1989, Rose was managing the Cincinnati Reds when Major League Baseball investigated claims he had wagered bets on MLB games, including his own team’s.

Bart Giamatti (father of actor Paul Giamatti), then-Baseball Commissioner, issued a lifetime ban from baseball on Rose. That has kept Rose out of the Hall of Fame, even though he is baseball’s all-time hit leader and holder of many other MLB records, including games played and plate appearances.

In the documentary written and directed by Mark Monroe, Rose continues his campaign to be reinstated in baseball. At the Q&A moderated by broadcast legend Al Michaels, who called Reds games in the early ‘70s when Rose was a star player, the hits king reiterated that he thinks a ban of over 30 years is long enough. “I’m the one that got hurt the most,” he said at the premiere, held as part of the Uninterrupted Film Festival in Los Angeles. “Me gambling on baseball, I didn’t hurt you,” Rose added, pointing to members of the audience. “I didn’t hurt her.