Rose's decision to sign confession balls ... brilliant

Sept. 20, 2006 — -- Sure, it's easy to be offended at Pete Rose retroactively, for having once upon a time signed "I'm sorry" to a bunch of baseballs in a desperate bid to create yet another revenue stream from the controversy that is his Rose-ness.

I said impressed, not pleased. By any measure, this latest revelation lands squarely in the dark-comedy corner of the sports universe. Still, you have to give Rose this much: He might just have created the business template for an entire generation of accused cheaters, finger-pointees and otherwise maligned athletes in the public eye.

The template: (1) Deny while it is imperative; (2) Confess when it becomes optional; (3) Turn a profit on both ends of the deal.

The latest on Rose, reported by the New York Daily News, is that at about the time his I-confess autobiography came out in 2004, he signed as many as 300 baseballs with the inscription, "I'm sorry I bet on baseball -- Pete Rose" as part of a coordinated effort to make money from the story.

Roughly 30 of those balls have turned up in the collection of the late Barry Halper, whose family has contracted with an auction house to sell them at an expected $1,000 a pop. (Halper was the one to whom Rose turned to hatch the idea in the first place.) It is not yet clear what Pete's cut of the action amounts to, nor where the other baseballs are, if they exist. But fear not -- Charlie Hustle always gets paid.

And that's the thing. Rose now has parlayed the tragic downfall of his career into its own cottage industry, and he has done so in at least four distinct -- and, let's say it again, impressive -- ways.

First, there was the book in which Rose flatly declared his innocence, saying he never bet on baseball as the late commissioner Bart Giamatti said he did in banning Rose for life in 1989. Next came his annual memorabilia cash cow in Cooperstown, where on induction weekend Rose sat down the street from the Baseball Hall of Fame, signing stuff for money and serving as a not-so-silent reminder that the Hall continued to stiff the game's all-time hits leader.