Rick Hill played college football at Georgia Tech before playing professional football and moving onto acting, screenplay writing and now with “My Prison Without Bars,” his first book, book writing. He was a jail guard in the movie “Liar, Liar.” In this interview with Pine Needle editor Nathan Walls Hill reveals how he met Pete, what he thinks of him and how he hopes that the book he co-authored with Rose breaks the all-time hits king out of his “prison” that he has lived in since August of 1989, when he signed a contract with Major League Baseball that banned him from the game but allowed him to apply for reinstatement. Hill also explains how current Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig told Rose that a public news conference was not necessary to admit his baseball gambling problem.

NW: You grew up in Perrysburg, Ohio. Did you idolize Pete Rose growing up?

Rick Hill: I would say that I sure looked up to him – I don’t know that idolize is the right word. I was a big Reds fan, so I would just say that I loved watching him play.

NW: You met Pete in 1986 at a celebrity baseball game in Pittsburgh. Talk a little bit about that.

Rick Hill: Well, we were there playing this celebrity softball game against the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, before the Reds-Pirates game. Terry Bradshaw was pitching as I recall. Terry served up a pretty good pitch and I just got all of it and it almost went over the fence. Jim Leyland and Pete Rose were watching and Pete just yelled out, ‘Give that kid a baseball.’ When I came back in at the end of the inning, Jim Leyland, who was my neighbor there in Perrysburg, who coached my little league baseball team, introduced me to Pete and we talked a little bit. Pete said that Jim had told him that I played football at Georgia Tech. Pete remembered the 1973 game when we almost beat SC, who were national champions and remembered that we covered the point spread. It was kind of interesting that Pete could remember those kinds of things but he’s always been sort of a wiz when it comes to math and numbers.

NW: You talk about that in the preface of “My Prison Without Bars.” Pete said something along the lines of ‘making a bundle of money’ off that game.

Rick Hill: Well, that’s a throwaway statement. He might have had 50 bucks, he might have had 500 - I don’t know I didn’t ask him.

NW: Is it remarkable to you that Pete can remember that 1973 bet and a lot of his stats but he seems to shy away from questions from reporters about actual bets on baseball?

Rick Hill: Well no, because actual bets, if you look over the history of a gambler, it’s not the bet itself that intrigues them - it’s the action, it’s the adrenaline rush that they get by having something on the line in a competitive game. It’s the reward pathway in the brain and the chemical dopamine that gives us pleasure. Most people can be satisfied with normal rewards. You might want to eat three or four times a day, but for the fella with the problem has to eat 16 or 17 times a day. That’s a craving; something called risk-craving behavior, which is caused by this dopamine in the brain. So, Pete’s craving for gambling was very similar to his craving for baseball. He has an obsessive personality – he either does something all out or not at all. He’s not ashamed of that. He talks about it proudly, that this is who I was: the same personality that got 4,256 hits wreaked a lot of havoc in his personal life.

NW: When did Pete ask you to write the book?

Rick Hill: I think it was about 1996,97.

NW: You worked with Pete about 3 ½ or 4 years?

Rick Hill: It was about 3 ½ years when we actually decided to do the book.

NW: Was his original intention to admit to betting on baseball in the book?

Rick Hill: Yeah, he wanted to, he just didn’t know how. He was struggling with it. He was scared. He had kept it secret for so long that he thought maybe it was too long. Maybe the folks wouldn’t forgive him and would they understand him coming forward at this time? So, he struggled with it. That’s the natural reaction. That didn’t surprise me. But you have to understand, what the book is about is not a confession. It’s not about, ‘Oh this guy bet on baseball.’ There’s 40 million active gamblers out there in this country – this is a common practice for them. Pete just broke the cardinal rule. But, this is a book about obsession. This is a book about a guy. It’s a great tragedy. It’s a guy who came from humble beginnings and reached god-like status in his craft – 24 years of playing the game, 5 years of managing, 17 major league records, some of which will never be broken and this tragic fall from grace and why and how it came about and how Pete felt about it and those some attributes, that obsessive personality, that led to such success also led to the downfall. So, this is a human-interest story about the man’s personality and his feelings and sometimes his lack of feelings.

NW: When word came out of the Dowd Report’s findings, did Pete betting on baseball surprise you?
Rick Hill: No, it didn’t surprise me. By the time I got around to reading the Dowd Report, it was in the mid-90s. So, Pete had already been banned for quite a few years. I can’t say that I was surprised. I had been around athletes and entertainers most of my life here after college, so I have seen things behind the scenes. I have seen what athletes, entertainers and politicians do. A lot of them live a pretty racy lifestyle. Pete’s not the only guy that got into trouble.

NW: So, when he stood up and told the world for the first time that he wasn’t betting on baseball, did you think he was lying?

Rick Hill: I didn’t know back then. Probably in 1989, I was willing, like most folks, to give him the benefit of the doubt. The only accusers that he had, the three guys who were all convicted drug offenders, didn’t have a lot of credibility and Pete Rose had 4,256 hits and 17 major league records. I sure had a tendency to believe Pete over the accusers.

NW: Roger Kahn, the author of “Pete Rose: My Story” felt Pete embarrassed him by lying about betting on baseball. Do you trust everything Pete told you for the book?

Rick Hill: I trust everything that’s in the book. We cut 100 pages out. I wrote originally, I think it was almost close to 500 pages. We trimmed it down to 322, so there may have been a few things that got lost that other people would have like to have read about, but you can’t write “War and Peace” in a situation like this. You can’t tell a story and go back and recant every little detail. Pete bet hundreds of thousands of dollars on baseball. He did it over a three-year period of time and he came clean about that. You’ve got to tip your hat to some who’s willing to confess that much.

NW: Pete told Roger Kahn he would never lie to him in that same book. If you find out Pete lied to you, what would your reaction be?

Rick Hill: Well, I guess in that case I would be disappointed, but you also understand that Pete has lied in the past, that that was part of his personality when it came to gambling only. I don’t think Pete lies about his family or baseball or other issues, but I think this is that one dark secret. This is that Achilles heel that was extremely embarrassing to Pete and at that time in his life, it was impossible for him to admit that he had flaws, that this got the better of him. This is Charlie Hustle. This is a guy who averaged 600 at-bats and 200 hits for almost his entire career. This guy had a work ethic second to none. For him to admit that this force in him, these gambling demons control him, wow, that was a powerful thing to face and he wasn’t ready to face it back then but he’s facing it now.

NW: Pete was born the same day Abe Lincoln was shot and the same day the Titanic went down. He broke Cobb’s record on September 11 and we know what happened on September 11. Is Pete Rose baseball’s biggest disaster?

Rick Hill: No, I don’t think so. I think he’s one of their biggest sources of glory and one of their biggest sources of embarrassment. But you know something, this is America and this is about human beings and we understand that some of our greatest heroes also have incredible flaws and Pete’s not the only one. In the book, we talk about whether it’s Winona Ryder, Bill Clinton, Elvis, (John) Belushi, Robert Downy, Jr. – talented people, immensely successful people, who have made some mistakes and had some drawbacks. I come at this from a human standpoint. It’s far more interesting to write about somebody’s flaws than about their heroic deeds. We can all identify with obsession, with hiding a lie, with making a mistake. We can all identify with some of those negative aspects of character, because we all have them. None of us can identify with 4,256 hits – Pete’s the only guy on the planet to get that. So you ask yourself this question as a writer, you’re a young journalist student, would your next question logically be ‘Wow, what kind of guy wins back-to-back batting championships, three World Series, plays for 24 years in the Major Leagues, has more records than anybody can imagine having, more records than any other player and yet he throws it all away for gambling, knowing that Rule 21 says you’re going to be banned for life?’ Isn’t that a fascinating story? What kind of guy does that? And that’s what fascinated me by it. That’s why I wanted to write the book and that’s what the book is about. I’m not caught up in all the same media frenzy that other people are having because Pete told me two and a half years ago that he bet on baseball.

NW: The Hall of Fame is full of some guys that did a lot of bad things. Do you think for Pete not to be in the Hall of Fame, just for gambling, even though that is breaking the cardinal rule, is that the worst travesty in baseball?

Rick Hill: Yes, he’s been punished for 15 years. I have trouble with the death sentence because I don’t think it fits the time. I believe it was necessary in 1919. I believe you have to treat the habitual gamblers the same way you treat a drug addict or an alcoholic. It’s the same chemical reaction; we know that to a medical certainty. So, how can you take one and say we’re going to give you six, seven, eight chances and pay for your rehab but take the other and ban him for life. It just seems hypocritical to me.

The remainder of Nathan Walls interview with Rick Hill continues and can be accessed by clicking on this hyperlink: Part II