Cincinnati Baseball Icon Pete Rose Dead At 83

by Kevin Burton

   This is a story about baseball cards and the souls of men.

   Or maybe it’s about crime and punishment and fleeting youth.

   Or maybe this is a Joni Mitchell song in the making; I’ve looked at Pete Rose from both sides now, from glory and shame and still somehow it’s Rose illusions I recall. I really don’t know Pete at all.

   My boyhood hero Pete Rose died at age 83 Monday night. As I write this, no cause of death has been released. He died right before the baseball post-season began Tuesday.

   Rose was such a giant in baseball and even beyond, that Billy Joel could write “Rose he knows he’s such a credit to the game, but the Yankees grab the headlines every time,” into his great song “Zanzibar” and have nobody doubt him.

   He was a credit. He seemed a credit anyway. I may still have his Wheaties box cover from way back when. I know I have at least one Sports Illustrated with him on the cover.

   One night at Riverfront Stadium, Rose broke the seemingly insurmountable record for most hits in a major league career, held by Ty Cobb. All of baseball and much of pop culture celebrated him. He finished with 4256 hits.

   But Rose became a villain, a scoundrel. His gambling, including betting on baseball, while managing the Cincinnati Reds, earned him permanent exclusion from the game he loved. But even before that he was accused of much worse, including having sex with an underaged girl when he was in his 30s. While managing the Reds he was suspended for a month for shoving an umpire. He was jailed briefly for tax evasion.

   Story was that teammate Johnny Bench, asked a mutual acquaintance to talk to Rose because Rose was hanging around some shady characters and Bench was worried about him..

   Rose’s claim that he did not bet on baseball, maintained for years despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, made some of us who idolized Rose the player, cringe, wincing in sadness.

   Rose had some of the highest of highs and the lowest of lows that one could possibly cram into one American life.

   So it’s no wonder that Jay Busbee of Yahoo Sports began his Rose article Monday by asking, “How the hell are we supposed to remember Pete Rose?” He wrote that “Rose’s best was inextricable from his worst.”

   Sometimes I forget that not everybody collected baseball cards religiously when they were young. Well if you didn’t, you need to know that baseball cards make their subjects look really good.

   Baseball cards are one part fact, one part illusion. They are packed with pictures, statistics, funny stories. The people on these cards become larger than life. Pete Rose was among the largest.

   My brother was impressed with me when I told him I had gotten my newly-acquired Topps 1971 Pete Rose card by trading with a classmate. I told him I traded Gaylord Perry.

   What I didn’t tell him was that I traded all my other Reds cards and Gaylord Perry for Pete Rose. 

   That’s kind of the way it was in Reds Country. The Big Red Machine was a thing. But Pete Rose was above all the rest.

   But he and we found out, he was not above the law. Monday he learned he’s not above God’s law.

    “And as it is appointed unto (Pete Rose) once to die, but after this the judgment,” (Heb. 9:27 KJV).

   Please don’t misunderstand me. The KJV reads “..unto men…” No Pete’s name is not in the Bible, neither is yours, neither is mine.

   But you can read it and plug your name into it and not be wrong.

    Story was told on Reds Radio that Manager Sparky Anderson decided to give Rose a day off one day. Rose is baseball’s all-time leader in at bats, games played and plate appearances as well as hits. So Rose almost never sat on the bench.

   Sparky said he wasted three lineup cards, absent-mindedly writing in “Rose” at the top because the act of filling out a Reds lineup card started with Pete Rose.

   Rose was ever-present. Now he’s gone.

   So today, there is crying in baseball.