Read Gem City Gamble, Part 1: The Dayton cop
Read Gem City Gamble, Part 2: The Pete Rose tapes
“Bo bought Rose a hot tub,” Haller said before the retired cop died last year, allowing for the first time interviews to be used that the Dayton Daily News agreed not to publish while Haller was alive.
“Rose and Foreman were so close that they bought identical Porches from the same dealer at the same time. And Rose gave Foreman the jersey he wore the day he broke Ty Cobb’s batting record,” Haller said.
Foreman confirmed he handled Rose’s bets at racetracks and casinos for six years prior to the collapse of his company in 1981.
Foreman said he often placed bets for Rose because Rose didn’t want to handle any money.
“I would make Pete’s bets for him” at an Atlantic City Casino, Foreman said in 1989. “He thought that much about gambling that he didn’t want to touch the chips. I cashed the chips in. He did not want to touch the gambling — the monetary amount.”
“I’m sure Pete bet with bookies,” Foreman said. “But I never asked who he was betting with.”
Foreman built his family’s 91-year-old company into a $75-million-a-year corporation before his own gambling addiction and other problems helped lead to its collapse.
Foreman’s lavish spending included buying the Oakwood mansion formerly owned by the Rike family, founders of Rike’s department stores.
He flew in a corporate jet, drove expensive Porches, Cadillacs and Corvettes and took frequent vacations with friends and company executives to Acapulco, Hawaii, Las Vegas and Florida.
When he remarried in 1980, Foreman flew in Guy Lombardo’s orchestra to entertain 500 guests at the Dayton Country Club.
On April 15, 1989, shortly after the Baseball Commission announced its investigation of Rose, Foreman sought to come to Rose’s rescue, charging Rose’s accusers were coming up with false stories about Rose “to get reduced sentences. Hell, they’re all turning each other. It’s one vicious circle.”
When his company collapsed, Foreman said Rose called him to ask how he could help.
“I said, ‘Pete, it’s so big, I’m so shocked, I don’t know my own name hardly,” he said
A month later, Foreman said Rose loaned him $20,000.
Foreman died at age 51 in 1991.
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