When Cochran resumed his cross-examination in a little-changed fashion, Garvey interjected, “You’re very informative, Mr. Cochran,” drawing a laugh from the crowd.

“Well, I want to be,” the defense lawyer was heard to retort.

Rounding Home Plate

Dershowitz put all his energy into his closing argument to the jurors, deriding Cochran’s case as “a multiple choice defense.”

He portrayed Cochran as desperately hopping between two arguments, both destined to fail—attempting, on the one hand, to convince the jury that Rose did not bet on baseball, and simultaneously to make them sure that any such gambling would not be cause to bar him from the Hall of Fame.

Dershowitz portrayed himself, by contrast, as a champion of calm evidence, saying the weight of the Dowd Report meant the jury would have to believe in “a vast, vast conspiracy” to conclude that Rose had not gambled on the Reds.

Speaking of a particular stub filled out with handwriting which analysts have identified as Rose’s, he said, “it’s not a laundry list, it’s not a grocery list, it’s a list that shows bets he placed.”

He finally resorted to a mimicry of Cochran’s famed rhyming defense arguments, showing a wide grin and apologizing to his opponent counsel in advance.

“If you bet on the game, there’s no Hall of Fame,” Dershowitz said .

But Cochran prevailed with what Toobin called a uniquely persuasive argument: “enough is enough,” he repeated several times in his closing argument.

“This holier than thou attitude baseball has—it’s rife with hypocrisy!” he exclaimed, citing Rose’s legendary status and the private missteps of other great players.

“You would not keep Vincent Van Gogh out of the Louvre because he had a drug and alcohol problem,” Cochran said.

In the end, the jurors agreed. Hank Aaron seemed to have spoken for all of them with an emphatic statement about Rose during testimony earlier in the day.

“There’s no question about it,” Aaron said. “He’s been punished enough.”

—David H. Gellis contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.