Admitting to a 14-year public lie is a start for Pete Rose, but it doesn’t make it better. If anything, it makes it worse.

Most baseball fans won’t agree with me on this one. They haven’t in the past when I said that Rose had broken the one rule that baseball does not allow anyone to break. But in the past, they said that Rose didn’t bet on baseball because that’s what he always said.

Now that he’s admitted to lying to the game that made him rich and important and to the fans who idolized him, they’ll say that everything’s better. He admitted he gambled, so let’s start forming up the parade to Cooperstown.

And that’s the problem. Rose admitted to gambling while he managed the Reds. He said he never bet against his own team and that he never managed differently because he had a bet on a game. If you believe that one, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Nevada you’ve just got to have. When you’re betting as big as Rose did and you’re as competitive as he was and as self-absorbed as he remains, you’re going to do everything you can to win your bet that day, and if that means you lose the next two games, you don’t care.

Further, according to Fay Vincent, the former commissioner of baseball who took over when Bart Giamatti, the man who banned Rose, died, Rose didn’t just bet when he was a manager. On ESPN radio Monday morning, he said that he knows that Rose also bet on baseball when he was playing for the Phillies.

Given Rose’s 14-year lie about gambling on the game, I’m believing Vincent on this one.

Yet, as Vincent pointed out, Rose has shown no remorse. Nor has he given any indication that his actions had the potential to damage the integrity of the game.

Instead, he still acts as if he is the offended party.

In excerpts from his book published in this week’s Sports Illustrated, Rose says that if he "had been an alcoholic or a drug addict, baseball would have suspended me for six weeks and paid for my rehabilitation."

"I should have had the opportunity to get help, but baseball had no fancy rehab for gamblers like they do for drug addicts," Rose wrote. "If I had admitted my guilt, it would have been the same as putting my head on the chopping block -- lifetime ban. Death penalty. I spent my entire life on the baseball fields of America, and I was not going to give up my profession without first seeing some hard evidence. ... Right or wrong, the punishment didn't fit the crime -- so I denied the crime."

Just like that, Rose’s problems become baseball’s fault. Even the 14-year lie is baseball’s fault.

The man who knows every bit of trivia about hitting records apparently knows nothing about how, in 1919, gambling almost destroyed baseball. He doesn’t even mention that baseball sees alcoholism and drug addiction as a threat to the individual, but not to the integrity of the game. He says nothing about walking into the clubhouse every day of his life past a very large poster reminding everyone involved with the game that, if they gamble on baseball, they will be banned for life.

The posters don’t add, “Unless you’re Pete Rose.”

This isn’t about forgiveness. It’s about rules and the integrity of the game. Allow Rose back in and you have to allow everyone who’s ever been banned, starting with Shoeless Joe Jackson and Eddie Cicotte, the ringleader of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, back in. Allow Rose back in and you have to admit that the gambling rule isn’t really a rule. Allow Rose back in and you may as well just punch every honest player in the gut and tell him his honor doesn’t count.

I have a vote for the Hall of Fame, and nothing Rose did this week changes my opinion that, as great a ballplayer as he was, he can not be in the Hall. Build a wing on the museum for his accomplishments. I have no problem with that. But don’t hang his plaque on the wall.

Especially not now that he has told his fans what suckers they were for believing him for 14 years. Especially not when the admission is made in a book whose sales he wants to pump. Even when Rose finally comes partially clean, he is trying to make money off of it.

Two little words would help: “I’m sorry.” But Rose hasn’t said them, because it is clear he isn’t. The only thing he’s sorry about is that he’s not in the Hall of Fame and not on the field. He’s not sorry for what he did to the game and his fans. He’s not sorry for lying to you, his public.

Nothing has changed.

MORE FROM BASEBALL

Baseball Section Front

Roll of the Dice sure pays off for Red Sox Rays can't come through in clutch in Game 1 Myers makes sure Phillies go up 2-0 in NLCS Dodgers seek home cooking to rally in NLCS Red Sox vs. Rays: You pick ALCS winner Phillies vs. Dodgers: You pick NLCS winner   At Bat blog: Giving Lester and others their just due Canseco detained at U.S. border with fertility drug Analysis: Rays are best bet to win World Series Blyleven: Making a pitch for postseason success  Baseball Section Front   Add Baseball headlines to your news reader: