When I started following sports, I had a slew of favorite players. There was no geographic pattern. I grew up near the banks of the mighty Ohio, but three of my faves (Russell, Orr, Yaz) worked for Boston teams. Two more (Alcindor, O.J.) were attending college in Los Angeles. Jim Brown played in Cleveland. Oscar Robertson played 63 miles down river for the Cincinnati Royals.
But the Fave I felt I knew best — as if a goofball kid from Maysville, Ky., could “know” anything about a big-time athlete — was Pete Rose. He was the only one of the bunch I got to see in person, albeit on an irregular basis. (We’d make the trek to the Queen City a couple of times a year to watch the Reds at Crosley Field.)
Pete was the hustling second baseman who won rookie of the year in 1963. He was from Cincinnati, having gone to Western Hills High. (So did Russ Nixon, who once managed the Braves. So did Don Zimmer. I once asked Nixon about Western Hills’ three illustrious grads, and he laughed. “I’m not sure Pete graduated,” he said.)
In the middle ’60s, Pete’s hair morphed from his rookie crewcut to a Beatlesy look. (I confess that I was undergoing a similar transformation.) It was about then that I discovered Sports Illustrated and took out a subscription. The fourth issue delivered to our mailbox — dated May 27, 1968; cover price was 40 cents — had Pete on its cover.
My dad often bought us tickets for the Reds’ final game of the season. In 1964 we suffered through the 10-0 loss to Philadelphia that cost the Reds a spot in a pennant playoff against St. Louis. (Pete went 1-for-4.) We were at Crosley again for the last game of 1968. It was a happier Sunday. Pete led off with double against the Giants’ Ray Sadecki, and that hit enabled Pete to edge the Pirates’ Matty Alou for his first batting title.
I have a hundred more Pete memories, but I’ll mention Game 4 of the 1973 NLCS against the Mets because it made me yell. I was a freshman at Transylvania watching the little yellow TV in my dorm room. Pete gotten into a Game 3 fistfight with Bud Harrelson after a takeout slide at second base. Game 4 went to extra innings.
The Big Red Machine was on the brink of elimination at the hands of the 82-win Mets. In the 12th, Pete hit a home run off Harry Parker and raised his right fist as he rounded second. The Shea Stadium crowd, already disposed to hate his guts, voiced its displeasure. That raised fist was about the coolest thing I’d ever seen.
Time flew. I graduated from college (UK, not Transy) and fell into a job at the Lexington Herald-Leader. I covered Pete a bit when he was still a Redleg and in the 1983 World Series as a Phillie. I covered him for the ol’ AJC after he returned to Cincinnati as player-manager. I always enjoyed being around him, and he still makes the podium of my favorite players. But not once since he was banned from baseball in 1989 have I believed he belongs in the Hall of Fame.
I’ve voted on the Hall of Fame for 21 years. I’ve voted for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, whom I never much liked as people. I wouldn’t vote for Pete, whom I did and do. Even as he insisted he didn’t bet on baseball as a player, I believed otherwise. I believed all along he’d broken Rule 21, which has stood since the Black Sox. I believe he dishonored the game.
I doubted Pete because I’d heard too much about him. His lust for life, shall we say, was renowned. Legend holds that Atlanta’s Downtown Hilton was the scene of a roaring disagreement between him and his soon-to-be first ex-wife. (She’d arrived unannounced.) There are two horse tracks in the Cincinnati area, one on each side of the river. Pete knew them intimately. He’d go to the races in the afternoons before games. An IRS probe into unreported winnings spurred MLB’s Dowd Report.
In the winter of 1965, the Maysville Lions Club asked Pete to speak. Pete’s first question: “Whadda you cats pay?” His second: “Where’n hell’s Maysville?”
My dad planned to take me to hear Pete. I fell sick. My dad came home and said he wasn’t glad I hadn’t gone. Many Maysville men spent the evening being asked by their young sons the meaning of the colorful words they’d heard from Pete.
I still have the autograph Dad brought me: On a white slip of paper, written in red ink, “Best wishes, Mark, (from) Pete Rose.” I have only the fondest memories of Pete the player. But ESPN’s “Outside The Lines” reported this week that it had found a notebook indicating Pete indeed bet on games in which he played in 1986, when he was playing and managing the Reds. Shocked, I wasn’t.
I liked Pete because he always hustled. I distrust him because he has never stopped hustling. Many years ago, my mom — who turned 89 on Saturday! — said: “Pete was always a good ballplayer, but he never had any class.” It remains the best description I’ve heard of the man.
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