[Kevin Finnerty]

I was speaking directly to his naive belief that people would make public quotations of what they know about their teammates' or colleagues' private lives. Or that journalists would publish anywhere near everything they know about someone--especially someone they like. That's naive. That's all I was referring to.

However, many of those same people may make private statements to many people. That's how it is or was.

My only contention all along is that Rose was so reckless with his private life that it became public knowledge during the 1970s. It did. I also defended anyone's tendency to not want to know about the misbehavior and misdeeds of one of the game's icons.

But this 153 guy went on about how if it wasn't heard by his ears or read by his eyes that it wasn't public knowledge. How did I know, if it wasn't public knowledge? I was hanging out in and around ballplayers in Los Angeles for crying out loud. It doesn't get much more public than that. I didn't see anyone else behave the way Rose did.

This is late in his run, but it speaks to his recklessness: In June of 1989, during the time Pete was being investigated by the commissioner's office, but still managing, he left the dugout during an inning and went to the clubhouse to watch the running of the Belmont Stakes! Tony Perez took over for a little while. It happened in a stadium full of people and hundreds, if not thousands saw him leave and come back right about the time that the results of the Belmont were posted on the message board. So that reckless bit of conduct was typical of Rose's style. And he pulled that beauty while they were investigating his gambling ties!

That reckless act was public knowledge. Did you know about it? I did; I watched it up close. So did a significant number of other members of the general public. Thousands, maybe. That makes it public knowledge. I watched it and many other reckless things that Rose did very publicly as far back as 1972. I read and heard of his paternity woes right then, in the mid-70s. That part of his little rampage through history is what made me stop admiring him. Other misdeeds of his that attracted the attention of baseball's leadership in the first place were also committed while he was still playing and managing, and were also widely known. Almost everybody I knew in baseball knew about most of the stuff that he was doing, but it was Pete Rose, for crying out loud! They weren't going to let that ruin the guy. It's the same brand of resistance that we have to have about any star or artist whose work we admire, but they're a scumbag in everyday life.

This debate sounds like ones that took place in our corner sports bar in 1989 and '90.