Pete Rose still hopes for baseball's forgiveness
Pete Rose is a baseball legend whose remarkable accomplishments are all overshadowed by the day 25 years ago when he was banned from baseball for betting on his own team's games. What does he think now of his astonishing fall from grace? He talks with our Lee Cowan:
"I had more pleasurable nights in baseball than anybody that ever played the game," said Pete Rose. "I'm part of history. I'm part of history, you know? And there's no question in my mind, I'll die the Hit King. I will die the Hit King."
No matter what you think of Pete Rose, you can't deny what an electric moment it was on September 11th, 1985, when Rose became baseball's all-time major league hit leader -- a record that still stands today.
And yet, the debate over whether his cardinal sin -- gambling on baseball -- should keep him out of the Hall of Fame for life remains as fierce as ever.
Though there's little debate in Cincinnati. In the Queen City, Pete Rose is king. "Pete Rose: Hall of Fame, all day long, best ever, to play the game," said one Reds fan.
He still goes to the Opening Day, and whenever he shows up on the Jumbotron, Reds fans go wild. He grew up five miles from the Cincinnati ball park, often ditching school as a kid to see the Reds play.
"I'd be up there, where I needed oxygen," he laughed. "I mean, I didn't care. Up there is better than home, and up there is better than going to school!"
He said school was never his thing, except to play football. "My biggest love in high school was football," he said. "Not baseball. I was a better football player than I was a baseball player."
So how did he end up on a big-league baseball diamond? "Well, I was lucky, because I had an uncle who was a scout for the Reds. This is sad to say. But if I had not had an uncle who was a scout for the Reds, I would have never got an opportunity to play for the Reds."
Maybe he over-compensated. He played so hard, he got a nickname: Charlie Hustle. He won games, but he didn't always win friends in the clubhouse.
Cowan asked, "What was it like your rookie year? I mean, were you accepted by the rest of the team?"
"I wasn't, I wasn't," replied Rose. "You throw this brash, young kid in there from Cincinnati. And I was brash. I wasn't cocky, but I was very confident, the way I played."
"You weren't cocky, though?"
"No, I wasn't cocky. If it was cocky, it wasn't ... well, maybe I was cocky. But I wasn't arrogant. It's a big difference!"
Rose was called up to the major leagues in 1963. He lived with his parents his rookie year, in a house at the end of Braddock Street on Cincinnati's West Side, where Rose showed Cowan a stand of trees: "Where all those trees are, used to be a little ball field for me. Right in the backyard."
It sits just above the banks of the Ohio River, where as a kid Rose worked on a ferry: Boone County No 7. "It was more or less the joy of riding the ferry back and forth, you know? Like a river captain!"
Cowan and Rose rode across the Ohio to a park where Rose used to play ball. As a teen, it was where he honed his baseball skills. They've even named the diamond after him -- and that's not all: "Now, I go to Reds' games, where are they playing at? On Pete Rose Way!"
"What do you think when you see that now?" Cowan asked.
Rose slapped himself: "Am I alive? I remember the first time I went over the bridge and saw that big freeway sign, Pete Rose Way, I looked at Arnie, my buddy, I said, 'Am I dead?' 'Cause you're supposed to be dead when your name's on a street!"
Rose helped lead the Big Red Machine to two World Series Championships -- and a third with the Philadelphia Phillies.
In addition to being Major League Baseball's all-time hits leader, Rose also holds the record for the most career at-bats, the most career singles, and the most games ever played, just to name a few.
"Oh, when I go to talk to independent leagues or minor league teams, I tell 'em -- and it's the truth -- I look 'em right in the eye and say, 'Let me tell you guys something: everybody in this clubhouse has more talent than me. But none of you will accomplish anything that I did. Because I'm gonna out-work you. I had more enthusiasm than you, I had more desire than you. Those are God-given talents, too. Not justa strong arm, power.
"Enthusiasm is a God-given talent. You can't teach enthusiasm. You can't teach desire. You either got it, or you don't. And I had it."
Had it indeed -- and fans haven't forgotten his hard scrabble style of play. But despite those records, at 73, the closest Pete Rose can get to the game these days is signing his name for money.
He lives in Las Vegas, where he's engaged to a Playboy Model -- what will be his third marriage.
Most days, you can find him signing autographs at the Art of Music, a memorabilia shop in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
He's got all manner of things for fans to buy -- bats and balls, photos and jerseys. Some cheap, some not so much.
An argument can be made that Pete Rose is more popular for NOT being in the Hall of Fame than had he made it in. His name is still good enough to pack in an audience at a Cincinnati fundraiser for a local theater. "Any Cub fans in here?" he asked, to a sparse applause. "Why?"
He regaled his audience: "I remember one time in 1967 -- I'm going to get in trouble for telling this story, but I'm going to tell it anyway. What are they going to do, suspend me?"
He's still asked to endorse products, everything from pizzas -- to athletic wear. In a recent ad for Sketchers, he's even made his banishment a punch line.
Fay Vincent hopes baseball never lets Pete Rose near the game again.
"Well, I think it's pathetic," he told Cowan. "I mean, I think the whole current Pete Rose situation is sad. I almost feel sorry for him. I mean I'm close."
"But not quite?"
"Not quite, because I think he never really understands what it means to say he's sorry."
Vincent took over as baseball's Commissioner in 1989 from Bart Giamatti, the man who banished Rose in the first place. "One of the game's greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which has stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts," Giamatti said.
Rose had not only bet on baseball, but he bet on his own team while he was managing (never to lose, he says, always to win).
But gambling had been the third rail of baseball ever since the Chicago White Sox took money to intentionally lose the World Series in 1919.
"He was such a great ballplayer, and he cared about the game, but he cared about money even more," said Vincent.
Cowan asked Rose, "How could someone who loved the game of baseball as much as you did, and do, have risked it all?"
"That's a good question: I can't answer it," replied Rose. "I wish I had an answer. I usually got an answer for everything. I just simply . . . the best way to say it is, I screwed up."
"Were you worried, though, when were you betting on baseball that you'd get caught?"
"No. No. I didn't even think about it."
"But you knew it was wrong."
"Yeah, sure, I did. Sure I did. But you know, you think -- I don't want to say 'bigger than the sport.' But there was, 'I'm not gonna get caught,' you know? 'Nobody's gonna know.'"
What baseball wanted was at least an apology. Instead, for 15 years Rose denied it all. In 1989 Rose told a press conference, "The only thing I can tell the fans is that I did not bet on baseball."
- Pete Rose comes clean: I did bet (CBS News, 12/31/2003)
Cowan asked, "Do you wish you had come clean sooner?"
"Sure. Sure I did. Yeah, I wish I would, sure."
"How come you didn't?"
"I don't know," replied Rose.
Vincent said, "If he had said, 'What do I do to help baseball? How do I make this great game better? I made a mistake, I'm willing do penance. How do I do it? What do you think I should do?' He never said that."
"You think maybe, it wouldn't have been a lifetime ban if he had?" asked Cowan.
"I think there's every indication that if he had really understood, and people had coached him and he had gotten the word, he'd be back in baseball today."
Cowan asked Rose, "In your heart of hearts, do you think you're going to get in?"
"Yes," Rose replied. "I don't know if I'm going to live to see it. Someone, at some period of time, will feel it in their heart to give me a second chance. I might be six feet under, but that's, uh, that's what you have to live with."
Baseball may keep him out of the Hall of Fame, but it can't keep him out of Cooperstown, N.Y.
Every year while other baseball greats are celebrating their inductions, Rose comes to sell autographs. And he draws quite a crowd. Sometimes, it's the longest line in town.
But that still doesn't make his exile easy.
In Cooperstown, Rose told Cowan, "I don't think people really understand -- and it's probably my fault, the way I played -- but I got feelings. I'm sentimental like everybody else. You know, I'd rather be down there with a plaque on the wall, but I kind of screwed that up, and I understand that. And if the ban's ever lifted, I'll be the happiest guy in the world. But until then, you just have to try to do what you can do."
Most agree he was a great player -- but even Rose admits, he wasn't always a great man.
He doesn't used the word "sorry" much -- except on the baseballs he sells, which are inscribed with the words, "I'm sorry I bet on baseball."
For more info:
- peterose.com
- Follow Peter Rose on Twitter (@PeteRose_14), Facebook, Lockerdome and Tumblr
- Pete Rose: My Prison Without Bars" by Pete Rose with Rick Hill (Rodale); Available in Kindle eBook format
- National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, N.Y.
- Pete Rose stats at MLB.com
- The Art of Music, Las Vegas
- Safe at Home Ballpark Collectibles