Pete Rose apologizes to Johnny Bench

CINCINNATI - "Johnny, its Pete". With those three simple words, years of hard feelings began to thaw. Johnny Bench tells me that when Pete Rose called him out of the blue two months ago, he was somewhat surprised. Especially because Pete said he wanted to talk about the gulf that had separated the two baseball icons for decades.

The original plan was to meet this weekend at the Baseball Hall of Fame inductions in Cooperstown, New York. When Rose had a conflict, he suggested a Los Angeles area meeting.

When they did, Pete got right to the point. The point being the turmoil that swirled around Rose the summer of 1989. He was in the throes of a battle to avoid prison on tax evasion charges. A battle he ultimately lost. It was coming to a head the same time Johnny was heading to Baseball's Hall of Fame as one of only a handful of first ballot inductees.

Media coast to coast were more enthralled with Pete's demise than the pending induction of Johnny and American League legend Carl Yastremski.

And Pete was well aware of how the unseemly end to his career had cast a shadow over the proceedings in Cooperstown. He addressed it almost immediately after meeting Johnny July 10th.

"I'm sorry", Pete said solemnly according to Bench. "I know I put you through a lot back then and I'm sorry for it. I could always talk to Joe (Morgan) and Tony (Perez) but I just couldn't open up to you."

Johnny was curious as to why now, after all these years, he wanted to set things straight? Pete said that with his 69th birthday looming, he felt like there were some very loose ends he had to tie up; things he wanted to make right.

"Does this have anything to do with Tiger Woods?" Johnny asked. With that an expression came to Pete's face that suggested to JB that maybe there were some parallels Pete had failed to appreciate.

Johnny says he raised the matter of Pete’s confession to ABC’s Charlie Gibson and how the act of contrition fell short of the mark. "You only said it was 'my' mistake. You didn't say anything about being sorry for any of it."

Johnny went on to suggest that Pete make things right with their long time friend and attorney Reuven Katz. Reuven was thrown "under the bus" by Pete, steadfastly maintaining Pete's innocence until he discovered the painful truth. Still Mr. Katz wrote to the commissioner seeking clemency from baseball for Pete’s sins. Pete was near tears at being reminded of how he'd betrayed the man who “was like a father to me.”

Pete offered, "I think I now know what Bart Giamatti meant when he said I have to reconfigure my lifestyle". And apparently he is finally attempting to do that.

Wednesday night, Pete was seated near Reuven Katz at the Reds-Nationals game.

He got out of his seat, approached Reuven and for the first time in over 2 decades, said “Hello”. Though I’m told he never got around to anything resembling an apology.

Pete's own fathers’ health issues also entered in the discussion between Bench and Rose. Johnny asked about Pete's well being considering how the senior Rose died young of a heart attack. Pete said that he's taking better care of himself after getting a health 'heads up' recently.

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that all of the raw feelings or wrong perceptions about Pete and Johnny had been resolved. But the sincere hug they shared before parting was an important start.

According to Johnny, Pete concluded, "I always regretted that people didn't think we liked each other. That was never the case".