has obtained obtained copies of a spiral-bound notebook confiscated from the home of the man who placed bets for Pete Rose—Michael Bertolini—that shows he bet on baseball while playing with the Reds, a charge he has flatly denied as recently as last April.Bertolini testified as part of the investigation that formed the basis for the 1989 Dowd Report—which banished Rose from baseball—but he refused to provide the notebook to John Dowd, a former federal prosecutor who headed MLB's investigation. The contents of the notebook are not at all interesting. Pete Rose bet on baseball and other sports extensively. He bet on games as a manager and as a player, but never against his own teams. He had a massive problem, and was in serious debt. For the most part, these are things we already knew, except for the bets he made as a player. Rose always denied that, even after coming clean in 2004 about his time as Reds manager.What is interesting, however, is how the notebook was even discovered. Bertolini was being investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service for mail fraud related to his memorabilia business, Hit King Marketing. He failed to return goods to paying customers and was most likely churning out phony autographs. In October 1989, two inspectors—Craig Barney and Mary Flynn—posed as prospective buyers for his house, which had a For Sale sign outside.
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With the warrant, they searched the house and found the notebook detailing the bets Bertolini placed for Rose, with many pages marked with "PETE" in all caps.Outside the Lines has been doggedly pursuing these documents and finally discovered that the notebook was preserved in the National Archives because Bertolini's file has "sufficient historical or other value to warrant its continued preservation by the United States Government." They traveled to the New York office to inspect the Bertolini file, but the notebook was not part of it. OTL somehow obtained copies, however, and were able to get Barney and Flynn to authenticate them as copies of the original notebook they confiscated.For Dowd, the news is further vindication that Pete Rose was placing bets with mob-connected bookies in New York. For the rest of us, maybe you care that he's continued to lie about his gambling problem, or maybe you don't. But the timing is curious, now that Pete Rose is back working in baseball and was set to have a meeting with new commissioner Rob Manfred to discuss his possible reinstatement some time after the All-Star Game.Neither Rose, nor Major League Baseball commented on the report.[Outside the Lines]Barney sent an agent to drive by the address. There was a for-sale sign out front, the agent told him. So Barney and Flynn, posing as a couple looking for a home, called a real estate agent and were given a guided tour of Bertolini's house. "It was such a mess. There was stuff everywhere," Barney said. Bats, balls, books and papers were scattered all over. It looked to them as if Bertolini had been signing memorabilia with the forged names of some of the most famous baseball players in history: Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Duke Snider, Mike Schmidt and Pete Rose. "It reeked of fraud," Barney said. The two inspectors spotted an item that a complainant said had not been returned. That gave them probable cause to seek a search warrant.