The upcoming issue of Vanity Fair magazine quotes a former friend of Pete Rose as saying not only did the all-time hits leader bet on baseball while he was player/manager of the Cincinnati Reds, but also kept wads of cash in his ceiling, used a corked bat and participated in drug dealing.

The September issue of Vanity Fair will be available nationally Aug. 14.

Who is Tommy Gioiosa?

What was Tommy Gioiosa's involvement with Pete Rose? The two met in 1978 at spring training in Florida, where Gioiosa, from New Bedford, Mass., was playing in a community college baseball tournament. Over the next few years, Gioiosa became a constant companion and runner for Rose, moving in with Rose and his family in 1978. After Rose's divorce in 1980, Gioiosa shared a condo with Rose. Gioiosa and Don Stenger, an invester in a Cincinnati gym, started bringing Rose to the gym in the fall of 1984. According to evidence, Gioiosa started running bets for Rose around that time. Around February of 1985, Gioiosa took over as manager of the gym. The only person with whom Rose acknowledged making bets was Gioiosa, with whom Rose said he placed bets on pro football and college and pro basketball games from 1984-88. Gioiosa was convicted in September of 1989 in federal court in Cincinnati. He was sentenced to five years in federal prision and served a little over three years. Convicted for taking part in a conspiracy that sold 110 pounds of cocaine in the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana area. Convicted for lying when he claimed the entire $47,646 Pik-Six win at nearby Turfway Park on his 1987 taxes. Convicted for conspiring to defraud the government by hiding all of the owners of the Pik-Six, including Rose. -- Source: ESPN.com news services and the Dowd Report.

Tommy Gioiosa, a longtime Rose confidant who went to jail in 1990 after refusing to cooperate with a Rose investigation, also is quoted as saying Rose instructed him to forge his signature on memorabilia.

Rose would not comment.

"We have absolutely no interest," Rose's agent, Warren Greene, told Vanity Fair. Rose also did not respond to a list of questions submitted to the magazine through both Greene and his attorney, Roger Makley.

Gioiosa told the magazine that he has decided to tell his full story now in part because the saga of Rose will never go away. Much of what he described in the interview happened when he and the baseball great were alone.

Rose, banned from baseball in 1989 following a lengthy, gambling-related investigation and thus not eligible for the Hall of Fame, has never admitted to betting on baseball and as recently as July appeared in a sports television documentary insisting that he never did.

But according to Gioiosa in the Vanity Fair report, Rose bet on baseball, on several occasions doing it directly from his phone in the Reds clubhouse office as he watched. Gioiosa said that Rose bet on the Reds, and that he was present when Rose called another manager to check on the status of whoever was playing that night.

"Who's pitching? How's he feeling?" Rose would ask, according to Gioiosa's account. "Like he really cared. Of course it was for betting."

According to Gioiosa, Rose once returned from a trip to Japan with a bag full of cash that he then hid in his basement ceiling, where he kept wads of cash -- perhaps as much as $100,000 -- in $10,000 bundles behind removable panels, Vanity Fair reported.

Gioiosa also told Vanity Fair that he was present when Rose expressed an interest in investing in cocaine with Donald Stenger, who ran the Gold's Gym that Gioiosa managed. Rose said he wanted Gioiosa to be the one to pick up the cocaine in Florida because he trusted him.

According to the report, when Gioiosa expressed concern over being stopped, Rose challenged him. Gioiosa also said that he was "scared" to say no to Pete Rose about anything.

"I would never say no," he told Vanity Fair. "I guess out of loyalty. I don't know any other word to use but loyalty."

The magazine said Gioiosa made the trip to Florida. Stenger denied this ever happened.