YOUR BEST BET
Your best bet is the one you never made.
To put any reliance in wagers, taking a chance of success, as many people have had to learn the hard way, is not the most rewarding way to go about living.
We all do it, even - or especially those who would insist they have never gambled. It seems to be a part of our very being as we plan our forthcoming steps and ,in so doing, trying to make progress in our lives at the least possible cost in money and effort.
Right now, millions of people of all walks of life are trying to decide what they would do were they the judge in the Pete Rose problem. We tend to see this as a special case in which a popular very capable baseball player was alleged to have engaged in betting on games in which his team played which was a forbidden activity by the rules of the game to which he had, tacitly, at least, agreed were a valid guideline in which he had to accept as an active player in the major leagues. The term "alleged" is a loose way of seeming to keep judgment on a firm footing, but the many of the sursvey seem to show that many believed all along that Pete Rose had, indeed, been guilty as charged.
At that point, many of us, were saying: "Aw c'mon now! Pete's not the first one to try such a stunt!" We looked around, hastily, for other seemingly valid reasons why the offence should be aside and that he be allowed back into the world of baseball and that his admittedly fine achievments of the past be properly entered into records of the game as in Baseball's Hall of Fame. To fail to mark what the man had accomplishment would be an unseemly action for us to take.
Then , to complicate the problem even more, Pete Rose took someone's ill-thought-out advice and "wrote" a book about it all. He has been condemned for having done so thus seeking to "profit on the whole affair." In that book, he told whoever actually wrote the book, that he had, indeed, engaged in illegal gambling at the time when he was actvely engaged in the sport. That in effect, admitted that he had been lying to all of us for a total of fifteen years during which he, repeatedly, claimed to be innocent of all such charges.
That, I feel, in my bones, did it.
Now, even if the popolar verdict comes out in favor of granting Pete Rose a second chance, as I think it will, he will in the memories of many baseball fans be forever branded as being guilty of a major transgression for which he might have well be denied those honors which would have been his to enjoy had he openly confessed and contritely said he was sorry for what he had done. Fifteen years of lying did it.
Lest we feel too confident be ready the next time you gamble and buy a multi-millon dollar lottery ticket to describe how your lifestyle will not change even just one little bit if you are the winner. That’s a time to check one’s nose for new length.
A.L.M. January 18, 2004 [c4l0wds]
