There was a four-paragraph Associated Press story the other day that essentially said that the status quo remains unchanged in MLB’s two-decade kabuki dance with Pete Rose.

ST. LOUIS – Pete Rose’s application for reinstatement remains under review – 12 years after he submitted it.
The career hits leader agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball in 1989 after an investigation concluded he bet on the Cincinnati Reds to win while he was manager of the team.
Baseball commissioner Bud Selig said Tuesday he still is examining it and did not provide a timetable for a decision.
Rose met with Selig in November 2002. His effort to gain reinstatement appeared to falter after he admitted in his 2004 autobiography, “Pete Rose: My Prison Without Bars,” that his previous gambling denials were false.

I don’t know about you, but the idea that Selig is still “examining” Pete’s petition for reinstatement looks more like an Onion headline than anything else. If the truth is really that Pete will not be reinstated as long as Bud Selig holds the gavel, then it would makes us all feel more like adults if somebody actually indicated as much.

Though I am sure it was unintended, I also got a chuckle out of the last paragraph that noted his “effort to gain reinstatement” faltered after it turned out that Rose had actually been, gasp!, lying about the betting on baseball thing for 15 years. Do we really suppose there was anyone in the Commissioner’s office startled by Pete’s admittedly long-ovedue admission?

I am sure it’s hardly good form to suggest such a thing, but it says here that lying repeatedly to Pete Rose is only slightly less disagreeable than having Pete Rose lying repeatedly to the entire Western Hemisphere.

I always figured it was the lying part that aggravated the average fan the most about the Pete Rose case, so it’s more than a little ironic to punish his transgression with more lying from another direction.