Shades of Hit King in Lance saga

A couple of years back, in one corner of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, this tourist chanced upon Pete Rose. He was sitting at a table, flanked by signs announcing his willingness — for a fee, naturally — to sign autographs. His special that day: For $79.95 he would sign a baseball with the words, “I’m sorry I bet on baseball.’’

Shoppers pell-melled one way and gamblers another and few were stopping to engage Pete’s penmanship. He sat, looking bored and tired, while hustlers tried to recruit passersby.

It was one of the most pathetic sights these eyes had ever witnessed and there was plenty of sympathy, but none for Pete, who always made his own bed. I immediately thought of the millions of Pete Rose supporters over the years, the ones who loyally stuck by their man, who thought he was being railroaded by baseball, whose passion for the Hit King never wavered. These were the people who wrote angry, vaguely threatening, letters — this was in the days before the easy anonymity of email let school out in that regard — to anyone who suggested that Rose was both getting what he deserved and deserved what he was getting.

Millions of people had Pete’s back, but when Rose broke a 15year cycle of lying and denial by confessing, it was his peeps that deserved commiseration and compassion; those who had trusted and believed him in the face of indisputable evidence were the ones he stabbed in the back when he, in the lingo, “came clean.’’ Which brings us to Lance Armstrong and his cycle of doping, denial, lying and — making it worse — his vicious attacks on those telling the truth about his doping, denial and lying. His admissions this week to Oprah Winfrey merely confirm what most sensible people have long believed. Better if he did it under oath somewhere when facing tangible penalties, although having seen the clips of Lance under oath, you know what that status means to him. When his teammates began turning on him, exposing Armstrong’s systemic cheating and his bullying that kept it in place, his response was to ramp up his legal snarling, to spit back at everyone, to damage as many lives as harshly as he could. His supporters lapped it up and backed their man to the limit.

Today, any sympathy spilled here goes out to Armstrong’s true believers, because even for them the fairy tale is over. Those who stay loyal to him, at least partly because he has undeniably done good things in the war against cancer that affects every family, will casually switch their focus. No longer will it be, “Lance didn’t use drugs. Prove he did. Show me where he failed a test.” The first line of defence now will be, “Well, everyone did it and he was still the best rider.’’ That may be true, but let us at least acknowledge the poor saps who did not use PEDs, who tried to do it right and doubtless finished back in the pack. It also won’t stand up to many waves because it avoids the nasty truth that Armstrong lived a life of lying, slandered everyone who tried to tell the truth and purposely wrecked lives along the way.

This has cost Armstrong dearly, as it should. His sponsors have gone, his foundation is gone — and who knows what secrets the bookkeeping will reveal there? — his sports career is gone (unless someone in power goes mushy) and, it appears, his money is either gone or just about gone. Will he be signing autographs for a fee in a casino some day? Who knows? Here’s guessing not many would stop if he did.