I haven't written in over a week, despite a plea from Brenda ("Christmas over. Tree Down. Write something new in yer blog, fer Pete's sake!")

Was anybody else slightly broken-hearted when Pete Rose admitted he had bet on baseball? I was born in Dayton, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati, and grew up on Columbus, just 70 miles east of Dayton, and in my house, Pete Rose was a Hero. I was a slip of a girl in The Big Red Machine days, and the Machine was an amazing thing to behold. After free agency, when the Reds couldn't afford the best players any more, Marge Schott had a plane fly over Riverfront Coliseum with a banner saying: "Pete, Joe, Tony, Help! Love, Marge."

It's not that I believed Pete. I thought he was probably lying. But I wanted to believe I was wrong.