Pete Rose was a bundle of contradictions.
On the field, few played the game as hard or with more determination. He sprinted to first base after drawing walks, sacrificed his body willingly and would do literally anything in his power to win — including bulldozing an opposing catcher in an effort to score the winning run in a glorified exhibition game.
“It doesn’t matter what the situation is — you’ve got to try to win,” said Rose unapologetically.
Today, head-first slides are common, but it was Rose who turned them into an art form. There’s an iconic photo of Rose, arms fully extended in mid-air and heading for the third base bag, looking like some baseball version of Superman coming in for a majestic landing.
He played with a reckless abandon, as though the mere act of playing the game was a liberating experience for him. Rose lived his life like he was trying to prove something to somebody. He craved the competition, and needed the game the way he needed oxygen.
Which is why it was so odd that Rose, who passed away Monday at the age of 83, never could grasp the damage he did to the game he loved when he bet on baseball in the 1980s.
An armchair psychiatrist might suggest that it was no coincidence that Rose’s gambling began to ramp up as as his playing career began to wind down. No longer able to derive the same jolt he got from excelling on the field, he did the best thing by gambling on the game. It was, to him, the next best thing, quenching his insatiable thirst for action.
From his debut in 1962 until his retirement in 1986 — and beyond — nothing mattered more to Rose than baseball. Well, baseball and winning. Both consumed him. Everything else off the field was an afterthought. When a young player once asked player-manager Rose if he could go home for a day or two attend the birth of his first child, Rose cheerfully responded: “Sure!” Before quickly adding: “….just don’t come back.”
Rose was, for a time at least, the consummate winner. His Cincinnati Reds won two World Series, two pennants and two division titles from 1970 to 1978 in Rose’s last nine seasons with the team. After signing with the Philadelphia Phillies, he led them to the franchise’s first championship in his second year.
He was also, undeniably, a star, the sort of larger-than-life figure that baseball no longer produces.
In the recent Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose documentary, released earlier this year, Rose could still not comprehend the magnitude of his sins. Instead, there were plenty of rationalizations.
“All I did was bet on baseball,” Rose said in the documentary. “I didn’t rob banks. I didn’t go around knocking up girls.”
Rose became expert at playing the victim, suggesting that, for the last 35 years, he had somehow been given a raw deal. He liked to tell people that he didn’t fully comprehend the gravity of the agreement he signed with Major League Baseball, the one that very clearly stipulated that was being made permanently ineligible. Rose, ever in denial, thought he could apply for — and be granted — reinstatement a year later.
That was wishful thinking, of course.
Years later, Rose actually had a path to reinstatement. His one-time teammate Joe Morgan, was a tireless advocate for him, attempting to convince former commissioner Bud Selig, as well as the Baseball Hall of Fame for whom he served as vice president, that Rose should be forgiven. But every time Morgan made any progress, Rose would say or do something to sabotage Morgan’s efforts. Rose was truly his own worse enemy.
In his later years, Rose became a somewhat pathetic figure, depending on card shows, autograph signings and Cameo video calls to support himself. Each July, during Induction Weekend at the Hall of Fame, Rose could be found down the street at a memorabilia store in Cooperstown, N.Y., signing baseballs — the outlaw in exile.
Somehow, he failed to grasp the optics of conducting many of the interviews for the documentary in casinos, all the while insisting that he was, you know, A Changed Man. Self-awareness was never the Hit King’s strong suit.
“I thought this country was a country of giving second chances. What happened to me?” whined Rose in the documentary. Of course, Rose was given chance after chance to come clean about his transgressions, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell the truth about what he had done — not until he got a fat check from a book publisher, that is. At which point, after steadfastly maintaining his innocence for years, he simply shrugged his shoulders and confessed. Imagine how that must have felt to his most ardent defenders, who believed his protestations until the story quickly changed.
Rose’s story should have been much happier. He could have been the consummate competitor, who grew up to play for his hometown team and collect more hits than anyone before him or since. He would be unabashedly celebrated for his contributions to two historic franchises. He would have been honored in Cooperstown, and not in some second-rate collectibles shop, but in the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Plaque Gallery, celebrated for the most number of games played, plate appearances, at-bats, and of course, base hits.
Instead, his life reads like some Great American Tragedy: the star ruined by his own hubris, who quite literally gambled away his legacy.
