With the congressional hearings on steroids in baseball, taking place the same day as America’s betting orgy (otherwise known as the NCAA Tournament or Las Vegas’ real national holiday), there’s only one man to look to for a little perspective. Pete Rose.

That’s right, the one and only Charlie Hustle.

On a recent visit to Rose’s autograph box on the Las Vegas Strip, baseball’s hit king shared his thoughts on steroids with TravelGolf.com. While being quick to point out he never used steroids, Rose wasn’t exactly broken up by the idea that a record-setting slugger like Mark McGwire may have used them.

“I went to the plate 15,000 times and never needed steroids,” Rose said. “… But why’s everyone getting on Mark McGwire now? Was there any rule against it back when he took whatever he took? If there’s no rule, how can you complain about him taking Nandro or whatever it was? There wasn’t even a rule against steroids. If you don’t have a rule against it, how can you criticize guys for taking it?”

In fact, the old-school Rose seemed more offended by the excuse Sammy Sosa offered in that infamous corked bat incident.

“The thing I love is how Sosa wants us to believe that’s the one time he ever went to the plate with a corked bat,” Rose said, laughing. “I have a friend who works in that clubhouse. He told me there were 79 other bats in there with cork in them. Seventy-nine.

“It was like a Chinese fire drill to get rid of all them bats.”

Rose is a lot of things, but if takes a hypocrite to know a hypocrite, he deftly called out Major League Baseball. The powers that be didn’t even care to put steroids in the rule book and now hide behind a new “tough” testing program that’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. Even baseball’s most notorious gambler wouldn’t try to pull that kind of scam.

For more on three hours in a booth with Pete Rose, check out the Charlie Hustle Experience.

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