T.R.'s Memoirs: Pete Rose was Charlie Hustle, for better or worse

Editor’s note: Former Texas Rangers beat writer T.R. Sullivan looks back at Pete Rose, the Cincinnati Reds and baseball legend who passed away Monday.

Pete Rose led off for the Reds, and John Montefusco was on the mound for the Giants. They were at Candlestick Park on a beautiful April Sunday afternoon in 1978.

There were 50,510 at Candlestick that day, the largest crowd ever to see the Giants play. The game was supposed to start at 1 p.m. but was delayed 30 minutes to allow more time to get people in the stadium.

Rose hit a hard ground ball to the right side. Second baseman Bill Madlock went to his left, but the ball kicked off the heel of his glove and rolled into right field.

Rose, running hard out of the box, never stopped. He raced around first base and dove head-first into second before right fielder Jack Clark had a chance to make a play.

“How can anybody criticize that guy,” said a college buddy to me as Rose brushed off his uniform while standing on second.

Just about anybody who watched and loved baseball in the 1960s and ’70’s has a similar story to tell, or an image indelibly etched in their memory.

A Pete Rose play. A Charlie Hustle play. A play where he broke hard right out of the box, ran the bases with calculated fury and finished it off with a classic head-first slide.

A trademark head-first slide. Trademark, because back then Rose was the only one daring enough to do it that way. Now almost everybody does it, but Rose was really the first one to do it all the time. He did it, he said, because it meant it got his picture in the paper more than anybody else.

There was only one Charlie Hustle back then. Pete Rose was the most dominant baseball player of my childhood.

Not my favorite player. That was Carl Yastrzemski. Rose wasn’t the best player either. That list started with Willie Mays, and you went through a bunch of names before you got to Pete Rose.

Rose was the most dominant player because that’s who he was. He commanded attention because of who he was: brash, cocky, outspoken, personable, friendly, talented and extremely successful on and off the field.

Yes, his picture was in the paper more than anybody. He was interviewed and quoted more than anybody. The broadcasters talked about him more than anybody.

He was on the cover of all those magazines like Sports Illustrated – 15 times – The Sporting News, Sport Magazine, Baseball Digest and many others.

National baseball commercials? Aaron? Mays? Clemente? Reggie Jackson?
Nope.

“Hey, Pete Rose? What does a man really want from his after shave?”

Yep, there was Pete Rose singing, “There’s something about an Aqua Velva Man.”

Right there on national television. Or it was Grecian Formula. Zenith TV. TV Dinners. If Viagra had been around back then, guess who would have been hired to pitch it.

Bet on it.

Collision at home

The 1970 All-Star Game. At Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium. The hometown crowd. Pete Rose’s hometown, born raised and a legend there.

The game was 4-4 into the bottom of the 12th. Rose singled with two outs to get something started off pitcher Clyde Wright. Billy Grabarkewitz hit a single, and Rose stopped at second. Jim Hickman hit a single, and Rose was off.

There was a play at the plate. The throw came to catcher Ray Fosse and then …

Wham!

Rose crashed into Fosse, knocked him over and broke and dislocated his shoulder, knocked the ball loose, stepped on home plate. Game over. National League wins.

The play is immortalized in baseball history. Charlie Hustle, playing all out in the ultimate exhibition game, playing to win in a game that essentially meant nothing.

Tough, hard-nosed, won’t stop at nuthin’.

They still bring it up almost every year when people talk about how players don’t take the All-Star Game as seriously as they used to.

“Remember when Pete Rose ran over Ray Fosse …”

Yeah, we who were around back then remember it well 54 years later.

Big Red Machine

Rose was on the best team. Possibly the best ever. The Big Red Machine of the ’70s. Four pennants and back-to-back World Series titles in 1975 and 1976.

Rose wasn’t even the best player on those teams. Johnny Bench may be the greatest catcher of all time. Joe Morgan won two MVP awards. Tony Perez drove in over 100 runs almost every year, and Dave Concepcion won five Gold Gloves at shortstop.

Rose was the leadoff hitter: a singles/doubles hitter with a high on-base percentage and three batting titles. He scored runs, lots of them, and was an All-Star at five different positions.

He was the NL MVP in 1973 when he won his third batting title. Willie Stargell and Bobby Bonds were better — look it up — but they weren’t Charlie Hustle.

He was the MVP of the 1975 World Series, one of the greatest ever, because Charlie Hustle really showed up in Game 7 against the Red Sox.

Top of the sixth, Red Sox are leading 3-0 when Rose leads off with a single. Morgan flies out, and Bench hits a double-play grounder to shortstop Rick Burleson. Except …
Rose went flying into second base and upended infielder Denny Doyle. The throw to first was wild, and Bench was safe. Perez followed with a two-run home run.

The Reds won, 4-3. Rose knocked in the tying run with a two-out single in the seventh. A walk in the 10th helped produce the winning run. Rose hit .370 in that Series, but breaking up the double play was the Charlie Hustle play of the Series.

That winter, Sports Illustrated named him Sportsman of the Year.

Rose commanded attention, just as he did in 1978 when he hit safely in 44 straight games. For a time, the nation watched and wondered if Rose could break one of baseball’s most sacred records: Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak.

He did not. But …

Chasing legends

In 1985, Rose was managing the Reds. A player-manager. The last one ever. He was 44 and shouldn’t have been playing. But he was chasing the Holy Grail: the record for most career hits ever. Ty Cobb held it with 4,191.

So, what if Rose was a .264 hitter with no power. He got 501 plate appearances that year because he was the manager and everybody wanted to see him pass Ty Cobb.

Almost everybody. Not quite everybody.

“Pete’s got luck on his side,” said Bench, who had retired two years earlier. “If the Reds hadn’t needed a manager, he wouldn’t be close.”

Baseball sabrematician Craig Wright called it “record ball.”

Wright wrote in his book, The Diamond Appraised, “The respect we have for baseball records, particularly the career achievements, is based on the assumption, the trust, they are the result of performance and durability in the context of the game. That is, they came out of a winning effort.

“Rose betrayed the trust and was allowed to tarnish the special regard held for these records.”

Yeah, not everybody was on board with the quest to pass Cobb. But it was a small minority. What can you do when Johnny Carson was praising Rose in his opening monologue on the Tonight Show?

The chase lasted all summer and finally climaxed on Sept. 11 in front of 47,237 fans at Riverfront. Rose singled off Padres pitcher Eric Show (Rangers manager Bruce Bochy was catching) and was baseball’s all-time hits leader, setting off a prolonged standing ovation, fireworks, congratulations from all over.

“Your reputation and legacy are secure,” President Reagan told him by phone. “It will be a long time before anyone is standing in the spot where you’re standing now.”

Commissioner Peter Ueberroth declared Rose had “reserved a prominent spot in Cooperstown.”

Some 3 1/2 years later, Ueberroth would open an investigation looking at the possibility Rose had bet on baseball.

Betting on baseball

Charlie Hustle did it. Rose spent the summer of ’85 chasing Ty Cobb. He spent the summer of ’89 being chased by baseball investigators and the press.

Baseball won. Rose was suspended on Aug. 24, either for one year or for life depending on how one interpreted the nebulous plea bargain struck between Rose and Major League Baseball.

It was Rose’s understanding he could reapply for reinstatement after one year. But as time passed, some things became obvious.

Rose bet on baseball. He himself would eventually admit it.

The commissioner, no matter who it was, had no interest in reinstating him. Bud Selig was adamantly opposed. Rob Manfred just as resolute. Neither ever saw any reason to consider it because the reality is Rose never changed.

He was Charlie Hustle to the end. He never showed real contrition or humility. Arrogance and self-conceit remained among his most dominant personality traits.

He lived in Las Vegas for a reason, and it wasn’t because he wanted to see Wayne Newton in person.

The love affair between many baseball fans and Rose has never subsided. He was voted onto the All-Century Team back in 1999. He was inducted into the Reds Hall of Fame. Fox Sports hired him as a studio analyst until his antics became too intolerable. David Letterman had him on his show.

Rose is not going into the Hall of Fame, despite overwhelmingly obvious baseball credentials. The board of directors kept that from happening by passing a rule stating anybody suspended from baseball could not be on the ballot.

The rule was passed just for Rose. His Hall of Fame candidacy has never been voted on by BBWAA writers. But Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez and other accused steroid users aren’t going into the Hall of Fame either.

Not being on the ballot hardly kept Rose from going to Cooperstown. For many years, he would show up on induction weekend — uninvited and unwanted by MLB and the Hall of Fame — and sign autographs at a downtown memorabilia store.

Inevitably, the writers would stop by to hear what he had to say.

He probably got paid for it. Charlie Hustle to the end.