Even After 25 Years Pete Roses Ban From Baseball Is Money in
In the long and varied history of sports heroes — from Pheidippides to Johnny Football — none has signed his name more often, nor more energetically and whimsically, than Pete Rose. Signing for dollars has been at the core of Rose’s livelihood, and lifeblood, since he was banned from baseball 25 years ago. For years now he has appeared four days a week, in five-hour shifts, at a memorabilia shop in a Las Vegas mall. The crowds don’t swarm, but they do come, steadily. An autographed ball costs $99, a bat $200, a jersey $40. Items are also bundled and sold in packages. It’s not unusual for Rose to move more than $10,000 worth of merchandise in a day.Prices and item choices are set not by Rose himself but by the company, Hit King Inc., that employs him. (He gets a flat fee for his work, but if sales pass a certain level, he receives a percentage of the extra money.) That means that when he’s signing somewhere else and has a different employer, the prices, and the menu, can vary. Just the other day, for example, Rose was in Cooperstown for Induction Weekend, where he has made almost annual autograph appearances for the past two decades. He signed at the Safe at Home shop on Main Street, less than 400 feet from the Hall of Fame to which he has been famously denied induction. In Cooperstown, customers could do a lot better for themselves than they could at The Art of Music store, Rose’s autographing venue in Vegas.Here’s a look at some of the price variability of baseballs with two popular Rose inscriptions, by retailer (keeping in mind that an autographed item for sale on eBay may be less reliably authentic than one signed in person or bought from Steiner Sports):The first inscription refers, of course, to Rose’s record career hits total; the second is a winking apology for the crime (betting on baseball) that landed him in the boat he’s in. Rose likes to lampoon his situation further: In certain circumstances he’ll sign baseballs with “I’m sorry I broke up the Beatles” or “I’m sorry I shot JFK.”Downtown Cooperstown is many things to many people on Induction Weekend but it is most conspicuously a bazaar for players selling their signatures. At any moment you can find scores of former big leaguers signing things in shops or at sidewalk tables along the narrow streets. Voices ring out, carnival-barker style, to let you know where to look for your favorite players. “Ernie Banks! A Hall of Famer, he’s right here! Come on in! Ernie Banks here today!”Special inscriptions like Rose’s are sometimes part of the transaction. This year, for example, the former Braves closer John Rocker, famous for his anti-New York rant in the late 1990s, was in town, capitalizing on the influx of Atlanta fans who’d come to see Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Bobby Cox get inducted. You could get a ball signed by Rocker for $20, plus $10 for a personal inscription. The inscription price rose to $25, though, if you wanted him to write “F New York” or “F the New York Mets.”So how does Rose’s Cooperstown fee of $60 compare with other players’ fees? Below is a look at the rate for some notable autographs during Induction Weekend. Typically, a Hall of Famer’s autograph sells for more than a non-Hall of Famer’s. So leaving out Rose’s figure, and relying on help from a pair of fine reporters (big cheers to David Bauer and Larry Mileo), I also calculated the average price for each of those two subsets of players. The autograph prices are set by the vendor and are determined, naturally, based on demand. It sometimes happened that a player appeared at more than one venue during the weekend and his autograph sold for slightly different prices. I took that into account.In comparison with Hall of Famers (the group Rose’s supporters believe he should be part of), Rose commanded 6 percent less than the average price. (Among teammates from the 1970s Big Red Machine, Rose drew about 13 percent less than Hall of Famers Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan and about 9 percent more than Hall of Famer Tony Perez.) Compared to other non-Hall of Famers, however, Rose killed it. Braves pitcher John Smoltz, who had the Atlanta contingent in town and who was billed on a price flyer as a “Future Hall of Famer” (he’ll get in next year) was the only non-Hall of Fame player whose autograph went for as much as Rose’s.Most surprising, given how long Rose has been at it and how deeply he has saturated the market for his own signature, is that his price has remained stable as he has continued to sell. At Safe at Home, the signed ball fee went up from $55 to $60 about seven years ago, according to store proprietor Andrew Vilacky, and has remained at that price. In Las Vegas, Rose’s autograph on a ball cost $79 when he was selling at the Field of Dreams in 2009. Today, at The Art of Music, he gets a 25.3 percent higher rate without any drop in volume.So why does Rose, now 73, still draw? As the eBay price in the first table suggests, no one is investing in his autograph in hopes of making much resale profit. Part of the allure is Rose’s continued fame — he may be the most famous non-Hall of Fame former baseball player alive. But there is more to it than that.What people keep buying is not just the autograph, but also the experience of getting it. Plenty of ballplayers can engage with the fan base, but nobody does it better or embraces it more than Rose does. Pete is extremely good at being Pete. You sit with him for five minutes during an autograph session. He’ll banter cornily (“Your name is Bob? Mind if I spell it backward?”) and crassly (“The whole time your wife was taking that photo with me, she had her hand on my ass”). He will give batting tips to kids (essentially, “Be aggressive”) and recall old at-bats with astounding clarity and detail. He’ll break off an anecdote about Willie Mays in a urinal, and he might, without warning or provocation, hold forth on the subject of blow jobs. However all this may sound to you, many customers clearly view it as value added. I have seen people wait to get their ball signed, spend the time with Rose, then get back in the queue and do it again.People are also drawn to Rose for the contradictions in his character — what to make of someone who both honored and dishonored the game so profoundly? Rose, through his gambling and his recalcitrance, has the lure of an outlaw hero. He’s also the only player in baseball history to be expressly denied a place on the Hall of Fame ballot, and that gives customers something edgy to discuss with him. As much as Rose might like to get inducted one day, he is not blind to the notoriety that his banishment has given him, nor to the understanding that, in the autograph trade, it may have helped his bottom line. “You know,” he once said to me. “Not being in the Hall of Fame — that’s my shtick!”For the right price, I’m sure, Rose will write that on a baseball for you.
Yet relatively little research has been done on giraffes, compared with other large animals such as elephants, rhinoceroses, gorillas and lions, say the researchers.Prof Janke and his team looked at DNA taken from skin samples from 190 giraffes from across Africa.Analysis showed there were four highly distinct groups of giraffe, which apparently do not mate with each other in the wild. Scientists have stuck their necks out and decided that the giraffe is not one species, but four.Until now, only a single species of giraffe made up of several sub-species had been recognised.But new DNA evidence shows that four distinct species of the animals exist – and they are genetically at least as different as brown and polar bears. The unexpected discovery, published in the journal Current Biology, highlights the urgent need to protect the world’s tallest mammal, say researchers.Geneticist Professor Axel Janke, from Goethe University in Germany, said: “We were extremely surprised, because the morphological and coat pattern differences between giraffe are limited.”Giraffes are in dramatic decline across their range in Africa. In the last three decades their numbers have dropped from more than 150,000 individuals to fewer than 100,000. 
Giraffes have already become extinct in seven countries. They are killed for their meat and their habitats are being destroyedSir David Attenborough There are four types of giraffeCredit:Jean-Francois Monier 
Researchers looked at giraffes’ DNACredit:Gareth Fuller /PA The scientists categorised four species of the animal: the southern giraffe (Giraffa giraffa), the Masaigiraffe (Giraffa tippelskirchi), the reticulated giraffe (Giraffa reticulata), and the northern giraffe(Giraffa camelopardalis).The northern giraffe includes the elusive sub-species, the Nubian giraffe, from Ethiopia and South Sudan. Want the best of The Telegraph direct to your email and WhatsApp? Sign up to our free twice-daily Front Page newsletter and new audio briefings. Earlier this year Sir David Attenborough told the Telegraph that giraffes are facing a “silent extinction” as their numbers in the wild dwindle.“These gentle giants have been overlooked,” he said. “ It’s well known that African elephants are in trouble and there are perhaps just under half a million left.“But what no one realised is there are far fewer giraffes. Giraffes have already become extinct in seven countries. They are killed for their meat and their habitats are being destroyed. Time is running out.” 
Giraffe populations are on the declineCredit:Jean-Francois Monier /AFP
And then there was the case of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office’s “bun tower” getting stuck under Chelsea bridge in 2006. Based on a traditional tower, usually made from bamboo and covered in baked buns, a steel replica was create in Wales and a driver was given “very detailed instructions” on how to get it into London the night before the show. “Of course, it came in on the Friday night, the bloke driving it ignored all the instructions and put the directions in his sat nav and ended up wedging it under the bridge in Chelsea,” Mr Reid said.”This bloody thing just wedged itself completely under the bridge and London traffic came to a standstill until somebody went and let the tyres down and got it out, it was extraordinary.” Mr Reid said he usually spends around 15 months planning before the big day 
“You are dealing with lots of complex relationships, people who want to be in a certain place, for example Hong Kong has a particular number they like because it is luckier than any other number so we try and build that into [the procession].”While dealing with each organisation’s request, he also has to make sure the bands are far enough apart not to drown each other out and animals that “don’t like other types of animals” are separated.”You can’t mix donkeys and horses, you can’t mix reindeer and horses so you have to have them in different places and they don’t like it if they smell each other,” he said. “It is bonkers really, the whole thing. It takes a good bit of fiddling with.”The Wednesday before the parade each year the organisers run what has become known as a “ghost parade”, wheeling the Lord Mayor’s carriage out in the early hours. The new Lord Mayor, Dr Andrew Parmley, and his wife Wendy wave from the coach during the rehearsalCredit:Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire 
It is the perfect parade; a three-mile procession steeped in 800 years of tradition and watched by hundreds and thousands of people as colourful floats, marching bands and, finally, the Lord Mayor’s golden carriage pass through the streets of London. But behind the scenes of the Lord Mayor’s Show is “organised chaos on a colossal scale” with last-minute mishaps and unexpected issues forever cropping up, the show’s pageantmaster has revealed. In a rare interview, Dominic Reid, an architect and solider who is celebrating his 25th year organising the parade, revealed the secrets of getting the world’s largest unrehearsed procession to run smoothly. This year, the show will welcome the new Lord Mayor Dr Andrew Parmley, the principal of the private Harrodian School in Barnes and organist of 35 years at St James Garlickhythe church. It will have a particular emphasis on music, including a special commission. Mr Reid, who is also the managing director of the Invictus Games Foundation and who took over the pageantmaster role from his father John, said he “loves” organising the show and has no plans to retire, as yet. “We have had lots of fun along the way, it has been a fantastic privilege to do it,” he said. “It has been really wonderful and my life now populated with these daft and insane moments.”The Lord Mayor’s Show is on Saturday. It starts at 9am with a river pageant before the procession, which starts at Mansion House, at 11am. The fireworks are at 5.15pm. The Lord Mayor of London’s State Coach passes St Paul’s Cathedral during the rehearsal for the show on Wednesday Credit:Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire 
The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office’s “bun tower” got stuck under Chelsea bridge while being transported to the show in 2006 Despite the rehearsal happening annually, Mr Reid said Londoners still haven’t caught on. “What I love are the people who just encounter it on their way to work and look absolutely amazed… it is entertaining,” he said. But despite the careful planning, there are always things that go wrong. “There is always something, I remember once turning up and somebody had very carefully built a traffic island somewhere where I wasn’t expecting to have a traffic island,” Mr Reid said. “It stopped us getting from one side of the road to the other and caused us to reroute a whole lot of stuff.”In 1994, Mr Reid forgot to make sure Christopher Walford was in the back of the Lord Mayor’s carriage before it set off.Eight years later, the then Lord Mayor, Roger Gifford, had to be transferred into the back of Mr Reid’s Land Rover mid-parade when one of the wheels on his carriage “jammed on” at Blackfriars.”He was very humourous about it and it all went down very well,” Mr Reid laughed. Speaking to The Telegraph ahead of this year’s show on Saturday, the 55-year-old said he usually spends around 15 months planning before the big day. It takes him up to three days to decide on the running order of the procession alone – a process he calls “shunting” – as he uses colour-coded cards to ensure he meets each float, charity, band and organisation’s specific needs. He not only meticulously measures the route, calculating timings to the nearest second, but “walks it a lot” including at 4am just to check nothing has changed. “I have a very complex spreadsheet with an algorithm built into it that helps me calculate timing and gaps and stuff, but the actual putting into order we do with cards and slots on a board,” he said. The steel replica eventually made it to the show Want the best of The Telegraph direct to your email and WhatsApp? Sign up to our free twice-daily Front Page newsletter and new audio briefings. 
A company director has been sent to prison after telling a judge that doing unpaid work as a punishment was beneath him.In rejecting the offer of community service, Owen Ambrose, an IT specialist, added that he found it difficult resisting assaulting fellow convicts who were also on the same scheme.Judge Peter Moss heard that Ambrose said carrying out unpaid work was demeaning and monotonous and it required “all his strength” not to be physically violent towards other offenders. He said that the prosecution did not want a trial on the issue.However, Judge Moss said that the shoplifting offence on August 24 this year at Morrisons in Shepherds Bush, put Ambrose in breach of the suspended sentence in any case. He imposed one month’s prison for the shopping theft and eight months’ jail for the breach.The court heard that the defendant planned to sell chocolates and pain-killing tablets taken from the store to help feed a Class A drug habit costing up to £100 a day.Andrew Turton, defending, said his client had worked in IT.”He is now living rough and goes shoplifting to get money to buy drugs. He presents as an intelligent and engaging young man,” he said. Mr Ambrose said it took all his strength not to be physically violent towards other offendersLee Harris, prosecuting Want the best of The Telegraph direct to your email and WhatsApp? Sign up to our free twice-daily Front Page newsletter and new audio briefings. The 28-year-old company boss had fallen prey to a drugs habit and had become homeless as a result, the court heard.He appeared before Judge Moss at Guildford Crown Court via video link from prison and was jailed for eight months for shoplifting and for breaching a suspended sentence imposed for car theft in February 2015. “I would rather to prison,” he said via the video link.He admitted the shoplifting offence but denied failing to comply with a direction to do 100 hours unpaid work without reasonable excuse.Ambrose told Judge Moss: “I do have an excuse.”Lee Harris, prosecuting, said that after receiving the suspended prison term, the defendant failed to keep in contact with probation staff after completing only five hours of the unpaid work programme.”He said he found unpaid work demeaning and monotonous,” said Mr Harris. “Mr Ambrose also said it took all his strength not to be physically violent towards other offenders.”