[Oddessa]

Pete Rose's Staten Island bookie ties reveal his dangerous side


Friday, December 13, 2002

It's the month of September in 1988 and Staten Island detectives are sitting the gambling wiretaps out of the crowded first floor of a Bradley Avenue duplex.

The windows are blacked out with dark towels and the Sheetrock walls of the small apartment are taped full with lists of names and phone numbers and surveillance photos of heavyset men in jumpsuits ducking in and out of sedans on streets all over Staten Island and Brooklyn.

The hundreds of calls the cops overhear every day are the usual, mostly. Tedious, half-heard conversations between broken-down bettors and the clerks who take their action.

Except, that is, for some brief snippets of talk from callers identified by the cops as legitimate wise guys; calls that raise the interest of some veteran organized crime investigators.

"Is he in yet?" the callers ask almost every day. "Did he get down yet?"

To the average citizen the questions don't mean much.

The cops know better.

The shorthand conversations are clear to them. "Has 'someone' made a bet?" is the question asked over and over again.

Someone in particular, that is.

By the end of the investigation, it will turn out that someone is Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose. The same Pete Rose who now wants to be considered for another job with the Reds and entry in the Hall of Fame.

ANOTHER CONNECTION

Want another Island connection?

A small, green address book seized later in the home of Graniteville bookmaker Richard Troy helps to make the connection between Rose and the wise guys. It holds the phone number of a Rose associate in Cincinnati, Paul Janszen. Janszen is talking to Rose every day, and making bets on orders from Rose.

Often the manager is calling in the action from his office in Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium. Janszen has probably been steered to the wire room by a kid named Michael Bertolini, a wannabe hustler from Richmond Valley who was managing some appearances for Rose in those days.

And there is no doubt of the facts.

"Corroborated three different ways," John Dowd told WFAN yesterday. "It's crystal clear."

Dowd was the lead investigator for Major League Baseball back in 1989, when MLB banished Rose for life. The crime was gambling. Betting on the Reds.

And Rose would later be forced to admit to the same.

And even if it was never proven that Rose bet against his own team -- the argument some make in lobbying his case -- he didn't have to bet against the Reds to compromise baseball.

Island bookmakers and go-betweens told NYPD investigators that just knowing that Rose was gambling was enough to change betting lines as gangsters tried to capitalize on bets they made for themselves.

If they heard from the wire room clerks that Rose had bet on the Reds, the wise guys bet on the Reds.

If Rose didn't bet, the wise guys took that to mean the manager thought his team was in a tough spot.

And that alone is enough reason never to allow Pete Rose back into baseball or into the Hall of Fame. Forget the fact that he's a bad actor who has snubbed his nose at baseball since the day he left.

WISE-GUY CONNECTION

Rose, knowingly or not, was working hand-in-hand with New York wise guys when he bet on baseball. And more than one person involved in the investigation thinks it was a lot less benign an association than Rose and his supporters would have you believe.

Dowd is one of them.

Before the game decides to pardon Rose, he said, "Someone better make sure who he dealt with when he made those bets."

And that's good advice.

When the cops broke that case, they arrested made guys. People from the Gambino and Bonanno organized crime families who could have turned baseball into a farce if they'd been able work on Rose a little longer.

If they had gotten the Reds manager in any deeper -- and he was already in plenty deep -- a few guys from a social club on Staten Island might have turned the major leagues into their own personal fantasy baseball league in no time.

With one manager in their pocket, one guy deciding batting lineups and pitching rotations, they would have made enough money to buy Las Vegas before the All-Star break. They'd have put every bookmaker in the Free World out of business by Labor Day.

The game would never, ever have recovered.

And that's enough to keep Rose out of baseball forever.