BASEBALL Unveiling the truth?
Pete Rose alleged to have used a corked bat while with the Expos
Pete Rose regularly had his bats corked in a side room at Olympic Stadium while playing for the Expos in 1984.
That damning allegation came from Joe Jammer, who was a groundskeeper with the Expos for 11 seasons.
“Pete Rose would have his bats corked in the visitors’ clubhouse at Olympic Stadium,” Jammer said in a phone interview from London, England, where he is now a club-playing musician. “I found out he was corking bats.”
Corking bats isn’t permitted under MLB rules, which say modifying a bat with foreign substances and using it in play is illegal and subject to ejection and further punishment. A corked bat is one that has been altered and made lighter by drilling a tube into the middle or the end of the thick portion of the barrel. The wood is then replaced by a lighter substance, such as cork or rubber balls. The conventional wisdom is that the lighter weight helps increase bat speed and, as a consequence, the distance a ball is hit.
“Pete was too smart to deal with Expos equipment manager John Silverman (to cork his bats in the Expos’ clubhouse). So Bryan Greenberg, who worked in the visitors’ clubhouse, did it,” Jammer said. “He took me into a room, a door to the left, and underneath tarps there was this machine.”
Jammer recalled that he asked Greenberg: “What’s that machine for?”
Jammer said Greenberg replied: “That’s a machine for corking Pete Rose’s bats.”
When Jammer told Greenberg he wanted to take a bat with him, Greenberg wouldn’t allow him to.
“The guy (Greenberg) was saying Rose had been corking his bat for 20 years,” Jammer said. “The guy said that nobody checks him because he’s a singles hitter.”
When reached by phone Thursday in Jupiter, Fla., where he has been employed for the last 10 years by Lojo Sports Marketing, a coy Greenberg said he wasn’t at liberty to discuss any role he might have played in corking Rose’s bats.
“I really can’t answer those questions. I really can’t talk about it,” Greenberg said.
When Greenberg was told two people this reporter talked with said he corked Rose’s bats, he replied, “they can say whatever they want.”
Greenberg was a carpenter and helped build fences at Olympic Stadium as part of his duties throughout most of the 1980s and early 1990s. He became the visiting clubhouse manager for the Expos for a number of years, beginning in 1993, and went on to assume a similar position with the Florida Marlins until 2010.
“Yeah, Bryan Greenberg did it for (Rose),” said another source, who wished to remain anonymous. “He only did it a few times a year. I didn’t know it was in the visitors’ clubhouse. I thought it was on (Greenberg’s) lathe in his garage.”
Rose spent only one season with the Expos but played 24 years in the major leagues and retired in 1986 as the all-time hits leader with 4,256, a record that still stands. In 1989, former MLB commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti banned
Rose from baseball for life for betting on games while playing for and managing the Cincinnati Reds. The career hits leader is not in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Rose reached the 4,000hit milestone on April 13, 1984 with the Expos when he doubled off Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Jerry Koosman at Olympic Stadium. The only other player to reach that milestone is Hall of Famer Ty Cobb, who retired with 4,189 hits.
When Jammer was asked this week if he had an all-time favourite Expos player, he replied: “I had so many friends.” He also suggested there were lots of nasty players, and Rose was the worst.
“That’s why I’m coming out and telling you about him corking bats.”
Jammer is credited with recording the Expos’ tribute song titled Let’s Go Expos. He served as the Jam Master band leader at the owners’ gala as part of the MLB All-star Game festivities in Cleveland in 1997. In his younger days, Jammer was a roadie for Jimi Hendrix, The Who and Led Zeppelin.
Rose, 79, played for the Reds, Philadelphia Phillies and the Expos during a career that spanned from 19631986. When reached Thursday, Ryan Fiterman, one of Rose’s representatives, would not respond to the corking allegations.
“Thank you for reaching out. We are not doing any interviews at this time.”
Rose, who freely admits he still bets on baseball, last met with current MLB commissioner Rob Manfred in 2015 to discuss a reinstatement but was turned down.
Rose said this past January that the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal that helped them win the 2017 World Series was worse than him betting on games and that he should be allowed to be on the ballot for induction into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
“I bet on my own team to win,” Rose admitted to a reporter in January. “That’s what I did in a nutshell. I was wrong, but I didn’t taint the game. I didn’t try to steal any games. I never voted against my team. I bet on my team every night because that’s the confidence that I had in my players. And I was wrong.
“But this (Astros situation) is a little different. It’s a lot different, actually, and I think that’s why the commissioner came down so hard.”