Doyel: Rose gambled and lied. Been there, got over it.

Pete Rose is a gambling addict and a liar. That's what we knew before ESPN's "Outside the Lines" reported Monday that he bet on baseball not just when he managed the Reds, but when he played for them. And that's still what we know:

Pete Rose: Gambling addict, liar.

So did this development change anything, other than the way we spent our Monday afternoon, consuming the latest Pete Rose news?

Doubt it. Rose most likely wasn't going in the Hall of Fame before this report, and he most likely won't go in now. There are two clearly defined sides to the Pete Rose story, the one side that says burn him at the stake forever – and the other side, my side and lots of people like me, who believe Rose is a gambling addict and a liar who has paid enormously for more than 25 years.

And that he has paid enough.

Were you on that side before this news? Are you still there now? I was, and am. Listen, Pete Rose is not a wonderful human being. Got it. He was my hero growing up as a Reds fan in Mississippi, but that ship sailed a long time ago, even before he was banned from baseball for gambling. Over time I figured out Charlie Hustle, mythical all-time hit king, was as human as anyone else and not worthy of my idolatry. Then he was busted for gambling on the game, and banned from baseball. Good riddance.

But that was 1989, you know? People change in 26 years. On Pete Rose, I've changed. Ban him forever? Seems a bit much, 26 years later. Has Pete Rose changed? Not entirely, no. As recently as April he was telling ESPN Radio in New York that he "never bet as a player. That's a fact."

Or a lie. Which, to people like Rose, is pretty much the same thing. His lies are mildly offensive, proof that he holds the rest of us in contempt, thinking we're stupid enough to believe him. That's how it is with habitual liars and gamblers: No sense of reality, no respect for the intellect of others. That's how Pete Rose has treated everyone around him – you and me included – for decades.

And still, even now, even after this bombshell report on Monday, my stance is the same: Forgive the guy. Let him back in baseball, not as an employee – that has been impossible since 1989 – but enough to be placed on the Hall of Fame ballot. Let voters decide on his baseball immortality, and either way Cooperstown can honor the feat, if not the player who accomplished the feat, of 4,256 hits.

That's probably an insane position to some of you, given the developments of Monday, but here's the thing: Pete Rose didn't do it again. You understand that, right? We already knew he bet on baseball as a manager. Now we're told he bet on baseball as a player. Don't confuse the timing of the report (Monday) with the timing of the allegation (1986).

Maybe this is me bending myself into a logic pretzel, but either you have compassion for a guy like Pete Rose, or you do not. Live long enough, meet enough people, and you might just come to the conclusion that addicts like Rose can't help who they are. In the battle of nature vs. nurture, nature wins almost every single time. We are who we are. The wiring we have, the wiring we've had since birth, it's in there forever. It's why alcoholics don't say they're "cured," even after decades of sobriety, because that wiring is still there and they know it.

Who Pete Rose was as manager of the Reds, who he was as a player, who he is today – that's who he always has been: gambling addict, a liar. That's why the news of Monday wasn't really news to me. Was it interesting? Oh, heavens, yes. Fascinating. I consumed it greedily.

But it wasn't news in the sense that it told us something we didn't already know. He gambled. He lied about it. He gambled longer than was previously confirmed, but he gambled on the game. Player, manager, not sure what the difference is. You either did, or you did not. Pete Rose did. We knew that.

Forgive Pete Rose? If you hadn't done it already, you're not about to start now.

But some of us forgave him a long time ago.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel