"Finally, the temptation got too strong, and during the 1987 season I began betting regularly on the sport I knew best - baseball . . . " he wrote. "I didn't even consider the consequences."
Anyone expecting Rose to express remorse for his lying and his gambling on his own game - behavior forbidden by a rule posted in every baseball clubhouse - is likely to be disappointed by the book and the other aspects of his public relations offensive.
"I'm sure that I'm supposed to act all sorry or sad or guilty now that I've accepted that I've done something wrong," he wrote. "But you see, I'm just not built that way . . .
"So let's leave it like this: I'm sorry it happened, and I'm sorry for all the people, fans and family it hurt. Let's move on."
Rose was banned from baseball for life on Aug. 24, 1989, as part of an agreement with then-commissioner Bart Giamatti.
The ban, which came after completion of an investigation for baseball by lawyer John Dowd, had the effect of making the game's all-time hit leader ineligible for the Hall of Fame.
Dowd's report listed 412 bets on baseball, 52 on the Reds, $2,000 and up, made on Rose's behalf by his friend Paul Janszen between April 8 and July 5, 1987. Janszen was one of Dowd's prime sources of information.
Why did the trail of evidence dry up in the summer of 1987?
Rose said one of his two bookies, a New Yorker identified only as Val, refused to take any more of his bets as the result of a dispute over the size of Rose's losses. And the other, Ohioan Ron Peters, refused to pay all of Rose's winnings.
"At that point I stopped betting sports altogether," Rose wrote. "Hell, I had no choice. I ran out of bookies!"
Rose said he never bet against the Reds, and there is nothing in the Dowd report to dispute his contention.
