[Stardust]

Pete Rose now wishes he had fessed up the first chance he had. Read more in this report from ESPN.

“I wish I had come clean the day they had called me into the [commissioner’s] office in 1989 – I do,” Rose told ESPN.com in a story posted Thursday. “Because I would’ve saved myself a lot of grief, a lot of everything. Money, you name it. The thing that was so hard for me is I had a lot of respect for the game, and I was respected for that while I was in the game. And I miss that, you know? But I messed up, I messed up!”

Rose told ESPN.com he sees many parallels between himself and Clemens, who was implicated of steroid use in Major League Baseball’s Mitchell Report and later, under oath before Congress, denied using them.

“When I look at Roger, I just think Roger is a competitor, and he’s got it in his craw that he’s gonna go to his grave saying he didn’t do this,” Rose told ESPN.com. “I think Roger is adamant that he’s just not going to admit this is something he did. They’ll probably give him a plea bargain opportunity. And he’ll probably not take it. Why? Because he thinks his whole reputation and everything he’s ever done is on the line. If he goes down, it seems like he’s made up his mind that he’s gonna go down fighting.

“But one thing I don’t like about Roger’s case is [that] I have no reason to think (former teammate) Andy Pettitte would lie,” Rose told ESPN.com. “And that bothers me. Is it possible Andy made a mistake, this or that? I don’t know. But if Andy Pettitte says it happened, well … then I don’t know what to think about Roger.”

Rose accepted a lifetime ban from baseball on Aug. 24, 1989. He applied for reinstatement in September 1997, met with commissioner Bud Selig in 2002, and in 2004 released a book, “My Prison Without Bars,” in which he admitted betting on baseball while Reds manager.

Rose’s application for reinstatement has remained open since. Hall of Famer Hank Aaron, a close friend of Selig, advocated Rose’s reinstatement last July, but Selig said only that Rose’s status remained “under review.”

“I seem no closer to reinstatement today than I was when it happened,” Rose told ESPN.com.