New York ? Pete Rose is an angry man.

He feels he’s done his part, confessed that he bet on baseball. But instead of absolution, he keeps hearing more condemnation: His apology came too late, was insincere, upstaged the Hall of Fame and brought him more money.

“Now you’re coming clean, and it’s not good enough,” he said Thursday during a 30-minute interview with The Associated Press. “It’s not right. So how can I win? How can I win if people aren’t going to be fair with me?”

Now 62, his hair thinner and his tummy chubbier, Charlie Hustle craves a full, free and unconditional pardon from baseball commissioner Bud Selig. He wants to get into the Hall of Fame — but what he really wants is the chance to manage a major league team again.

Rose says a reinstatement with restrictions would be unfair.

“I don’t know if they would ever say, ‘We’ll reinstate you but you can’t work in baseball.’ I don’t think that’s the American way, I really don’t,” Rose said.

He alternated between pleas for forgiveness and the cockiness he made famous during a record-setting playing career that stretched from 1963 to 1986. Wearing a bright red pullover in a suite at a Manhattan hotel, he sat back and reflected, leaned forward and vented.

In his second autobiography, “Pete Rose: My Prison Without Bars,” he finally confessed that he bet on the Cincinnati Reds while he managed the team in the late 1980s, baseball’s capital crime, one that led to the lifetime ban he agreed to in 1989.

Rose had hoped the release of the book Thursday would be end of the end of the public debate over whether he deserved a second chance. He would be the first person on the permanent ineligible list to ever gain reinstatement.

Instead, initial reaction to excerpts published by Sports Illustrated earlier this week was largely negative. Hall of Fame vice chairman Joe Morgan, his former Reds teammate, condemned the commercial aspect of the confession and saw no contrition.

“I’m kind of surprised that people are jumping the gun before they read the book,” Rose said. “I thought I was remorseful when I needed to be remorseful in here. And I must tell you that it’s hard to be remorseful on paper. You know, talking to you or talking into a camera, it’s a lot easier to be remorseful because you can look at me and hear my tone and things like that.”

He professes to understand Selig’s plight. Rose admitted to Selig in November 2002 that he bet on baseball. And while the commissioner, according to his aides, appreciates Rose’s popularity with fans, he also wonders whether to fear another foulup by the career hits leader, whose dark side was exposed to the public during that sordid summer of 1989.

“I understand that Bud has to be 150 percent sure, because he can’t take a chance of being embarrassed,” Rose said. “His reputation’s at stake. … I don’t think anything in that book is going to make him feel less about me than when he woke up this morning.”

But just a few minutes later, he balks when asked how he would respond if baseball asked him to stop his legal betting at racetracks as a prerequisite for a return.

“I would do anything they say,” he repeats several times, “but they also have to understand one of my means of entertainment is periodically going to the races.”