Former Expos Groundskeeper Claims Pete Rose Corked His Bat While Playing in Montreal

“Pete Rose would have his bats corked in the visitors’ clubhouse at Olympic Stadium,” Jammer said in a phone interview from London, England, where he is now a club-playing musician. “I found out he was corking bats.

Corking bats isn’t permitted under MLB rules, which say modifying a bat with foreign substances and using it in play is illegal and subject to ejection and further punishment. A corked bat is one that has been altered and made lighter by drilling a tube into the middle or the end of the thick portion of the barrel. The wood is then replaced by a lighter substance, such as cork or rubber balls. The conventional wisdom is that the lighter weight helps increase bat speed and, as a consequence, the distance a ball is hit.

“Pete was too smart to deal with Expos equipment manager John Silverman (to cork his bats in the Expos’ clubhouse). So Bryan Greenberg, who worked in the visitors’ clubhouse, did it,” Jammer said. “He took me into a room, a door to the left, and underneath tarps there was this machine.”

Jammer recalled that he asked Greenberg: “What’s that machine for?”

Jammer said Greenberg replied: “That’s a machine for corking Pete Rose’s bats.”

When Jammer told Greenberg he wanted to take a bat with him, Greenberg wouldn’t allow him to.

“The guy (Greenberg) was saying Rose had been corking his bat for 20 years,” Jammer said. “The guy said that nobody checks him because he’s a singles hitter.”