Pete Rose: Steroids 'Making a Mockery' of Baseball

NEW YORK – Pete Rose thinks players who use steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs are "making a mockery" of baseball.

The career hits leader, banned by the sport for gambling, weighed in on the Mitchell Report in an interview with Dennis Miller that was slated to air Wednesday night on VERSUS.

Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada and Andy Pettitte were among the big stars implicated in last week's report by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

Clemens denied the allegations. Pettitte acknowledged last weekend that he used human growth hormone twice while rehabbing from an injury in 2002.

"I never thought anybody would make me look like an altar boy," Rose said.

"I've been suspended 18 years for betting on my own team to win," he added. "I was wrong ... but these guys today, if the allegations are true, they're making a mockery of the game."

Rose was banished from baseball for life in 1989 for betting on games while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds, his former team. He denied the gambling allegations until 2004, when he came clean in his autobiography. He is not eligible for the Hall of Fame.

"If you're going to put these guys that supposedly did steroids into the Hall of Fame, I mean I've got to get a shot somewhere," he said.

Rose finished with 4,256 hits, breaking Ty Cobb's career record.

And if steroids were prevalent in his day?

"I would have got 5,000 hits," he said.