I grew up as a Cincinnati Reds fan and experienced the Big Red Machine years. Pete Rose was a key reason for their success and his 'hustle' mentality made those around him a better baseball player. He did more with his limited talent than any other sports star that I can remember. He lived baseball and wasn't refined or well educated outside of the sport. He also suffered from a terrible gambling addition. He deserves to be in the HOF, especially now that baseball encourages and makes money from gambling. Here is a great article from 'Doc' Daugherty, a former local sportswriter who now has a substack site. He captures Pete's situation better than others I've seen.
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"Of all the things you’d imagine happening to Pete Rose, dying wasn’t among them.
Pete the player, not running out everything, not running to 1st base after walking, not offering up a filthy jersey nightly to Bernie Stowe, the Reds clubhouse manager. We couldn’t imagine that.
Pete the gambler, not betting on baseball, football, the ponies et cetera, et cetera. Pete not proclaiming his innocence for an entire generation. Pete the seemingly exuberant spirit, not showing a strong face to an increasingly skeptical public. We could never grasp that.
Pete selling his signature in any number of creative ways. Hit King. 4,256. I Shouldn’t Have Done It. Mocking the folks he long ago stopped trying to appease.
Pete Rose, not being anyone other than Pete Rose. We definitely couldn’t picture that. All it cost him was all he ever wanted.
Baseball didn’t define him, at least no more than he defined the game. Even his fatal flaw is part of the game’s legacy. Shoeless Joe would get the analogy.
But Pete. . . dead?
That’s a hard sell.
Pete Pan played a kid’s game the way a kid would play it. He had that barrel chest, those Popeye forearms and that little kid’s optimism that everything would be all right as long as he could play ball until the streetlights came on.
He battled Bart Giamatti with that belief. He outlasted the commissioner, same as he did Cobb. Rose’s protests of innocence would overwhelm Giamatti’s conscience.
. . . until it became obvious they wouldn’t. Faced with that realization, Rose started selling his guilt. That, too, is part of his legacy. He wrote (yet another) book, called My Prison Without Bars, that suggested that, yeah, he mighta bet on baseball and that, possibly, he shouldna did it.
I covered Pete from 1988 until today. He was a practiced liar. He was like OJ Simpson, in that he told The Big Lie so much, he started believing it. Pete never killed anyone, unless you believe his lies did himself in.
I recall that Summer of ‘89, the year MLB had its teeth in him. I remember on many occasions sitting alone in Rose’s office at Riverfront Stadium, waiting him out as The Hit King showered, shaved and dressed. I’d ask him about John Dowd’s investigation and Bart Giamatti’s mission.
Pete would listen to it all, then answer in such a practiced, convincing way, I’d leave his office believing Baseball was railroading him. Pete could sell the moon to a gourmand seeking camembert.
Then I’d literally smack myself upside the head before I attempted my latest interpretation of Baseball’s saddest saga ever. Of course Pete bet on the game.
Then something fortunate happened for Rose. Baseball became a bigger villain than Pete was. Rose gained sympathy when Baseball joined the devil it already knew very well. Just sayin’:
How could a business that kept Pete Rose on the outside embrace sports gambling so hypocritically completely?
Betting in ballparks, betting in casinos, betting as easy as turning on your phone. Ads for betting lining the outfield walls and filling the TV acreage. Shohei Ohtani’s personal bobo, stealing millions of his boss’s dollars, to bet on sports.
Rose might have been a chronic gambler. Baseball became a casual hypocrite. Which ls less honest?
Still, Pete remained on the game’s doorstep, nose pressed against its window, until he died at age 83. You make peace with yourself on this one. Either Rose belonged in the Hall of Fame, or he didn’t.
Either you pardon a guy who has been in the joint since August 24, 1989, or you maintain he violated the game’s “cardinal rule’’ against betting. A rule that at the very least is being mocked and flouted now, every second of every day.
Either you acknowledge Rose has “earned’’ his place on Olympus, or he’s still a scoundrel. From Day 1, I’ve said this about that:
Honor the player. Punish the gambler. Life is not a succession of black and white circumstances. It is lived in multi-shades of gray. None is grayer than the life of Peter Edward Rose.
No player defined a city, in any sport, more than Rose defined what we like to think is great about our town. Roll out the cliches, they were all made to describe Pete and Cincinnati. Hard-working, overachieving, a tad short of perfection. Pete always had a little Bad Boy in him. Cincinnati, a haven for the whiskey business during Prohibition, knew all about that. Neither town nor native son was entirely saintly.
Only now, Pete’s gone. That’s an impossible notion, yet here it is, sliding headfirst into. . . somewhere.
. . . . into our memories, at least. And if that’s it, if that’s the essence of our recollections of The Hit King, then OK. Pete the Player will always have a place here."
