An ex-groundskeeper claims that Pete Rose “corked his bat with the Montreal Expos in 1984” and that the MLB legend’s cheating remained unreported for “20 years because he was a singles hitter.”

An ex-groundskeeper claims that Pete Rose “corked his bat with the Montreal Expos in 1984” and that the MLB legend’s cheating remained unreported for “20 years because he was a singles hitter.”

Pete Rose, who was previously suspended from Major League Baseball due to his involvement in gambling, is now being accused of violating yet another regulation by reportedly corking his bat.

A former Montreal Expos groundskeeper revealed to the Montreal Gazette that in 1984, Rose had an Olympic Stadium employee cork his bats on a regular basis. Rose, then seventy-nine, was traded back to his old team, the Cincinnati Reds, in August of 1984 after spending the majority of that season with the Expos.

 

In a phone chat with the Gazette, Joe Jammer, who was formerly the groundskeeper for the Expos and is currently a musician in London, stated that Pete Rose would cork his bats in the visitors’ clubhouse at Olympic Stadium. I discovered that he was corking bats.

 

“To cork his bats in the Expos clubhouse, Pete was too cunning to deal with John Silverman, the equipment manager for the Expos.” Thus, it was done by Bryan Greenberg, who was employed at the visitors’ clubhouse. He led me to a

There was a chamber, a door to the left, and this machine underneath tarps.

Jammer stated that Greenberg informed him that Rose’s bats were corked using the machine.

Jammer told the Gazette, “The guy (Greenberg) was saying Rose had been corking his bat for 20 years.” “The guy said that because he hits singles, nobody checks him.”

To increase a bat’s performance, cork it out by hollowing out a part of the wood and packing cork or rubber balls within. The basic idea is that a corked bat has the same surface area and plate coverage as a heavier bat, but it is lighter and helps with timing.

MLB prohibits this process.

The newspaper received confirmation of Jammer’s account from another unnamed source.

Yes, Bryan Greenberg carried out the task for Rose, the unnamed insider purportedly stated. He only performed it a couple times year. It’s in the visitors’ clubhouse, I didn’t know that. I believed it to be in Greenberg’s garage on his lathe.

The Gazette said that it recently inquired about whether Greenberg, who is currently employed by a sports marketing company in Florida, corked Rose’s bats.