Pete Rose: An American Dilemma (38 page)

Chapter 12

¹
A very small handful of present-day players have even appeared in more than 1,500 minor league games with scant major league reward—first baseman John Lindsey (1,908 career minor league hits) and third baseman Mike Hessman (389 home runs) among them. And all of those have played the majority of their games at the Triple A level, where the hotels are decent and a solid living can be made. Such Triple A players earn many times what a Class A or independent league veteran makes.

²
As the years went on, Fawn often seemed forgotten by Pete—an afterthought, and heartbreakingly so. Karolyn recalls reporters or acquaintances running into her and Fawn at the ballpark and saying with surprise: “I didn’t know Pete had a daughter!”

³
Bill Giles, the longtime Phillies executive, tells the story of standing in an elevator in a Florida hotel with his father, Warren, the National League president, when Karolyn and Petey stepped inside. Petey was about nine and Warren mussed his hair and said to Karolyn: “He’s so cute, I just love this kid.” To which Karolyn replied: “Yeah, but he cusses too goddamn much.”

⁴
At Opening Day in 1987 a reporter approached Pete Jr. on the field before the game and asked him how he felt about losing his starting shortstop job to Barry Larkin. The writer had confused Petey, then 17, with 21-year-old Reds’ infielder Kurt Stillwell.

Chapter 13

¹
Along with his associations with the big-time gamblers Memphis Engelberg and Connie Immerman, Durocher had been having an affair with the married movie actress Laraine Day, upsetting the Catholic Youth Organization enough that its Brooklyn chapter threatened to boycott the Dodgers. Those events, along with some unpleasant things that Durocher said publicly about Yankees’ owner Larry MacPhail, led baseball commissioner Happy Chandler to suspend the Dodgers manager for that entire, historic season.

²
Another telling mark of Giamatti’s tenure came in advance of the 1988 season when he ushered in strict enforcement of a long overlooked feature of the balk rule by approving language that called for a pitcher to come to a “discernible” stop—as opposed to just a stop—in his set position. The amendment led to a 260% percent jump in balks (from 356 to 924) over the 1987 season, as well as to a lot of booing and cussing. The rule was rescinded after the one season.

Chapter 14

¹
Early on in what would be a daylong interview of Dowd at his Washington, D.C., office in 2012, he suddenly became unhappy with my line of questioning. I was playing devil’s advocate to some assertions he had made, asking him to elaborate, checking his version against others I had heard or seen. “What the fuck, who sent you here?” Dowd said suddenly, raising his voice and standing up behind his desk. His face grew red and his eyes had narrowed. “Who put you up to this? Did Selig send you?” It took me a few minutes to reassure Dowd that no one had “sent me,” that my intentions were as previously stated—to research this book fair and square—and that countering him with questions and casting a certain skepticism on all sides of the story was, as he of all people surely understood, part of my job. He calmed down and I breathed again, and after that we got along fine.

Chapter 17

¹
Giamatti himself might have been disturbed by the board’s dictatorial move. When asked at the press conference announcing Rose’s ban from baseball whether the expulsion would have bearing on the Hall of Fame, Giamatti had dismissed the idea, saying he saw no place for intervention: “You,” he said, addressing the baseball writers in attendance, “will decide whether he belongs in the Hall of Fame.”

²
Players of various generations were asked about Rose in those years and while some were deadset against him, by far the majority supported Rose’s inclusion to the Hall. “I would let him in,” said Ted Williams. “I’m not saying [what he did] is right but it shouldn’t deny him something he deserves.” Other players, like Jenkins, articulated reasons to support Rose even beyond his formidable stats. “I’d like to see Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame,” said Reggie Jackson. “Baseball is so American that I want to see him in there as a guy who loves baseball and America. Pete Rose diving into second base is more important than Pete Rose the man.”

³
Vincent has never forgotten, as one example, what Giamatti said to him at the funeral of Vincent’s father: “When the last of your parents dies you feel particularly pained because that is the end of the line. There is no longer anyone left between you and eternity.”

⁴
Around the time that Vincent was ousted and Selig ushered in, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf said that baseball needed someone who would “run the business for the owners, not the players or the umpires or the fans.”

Chapter 18

¹
Guillen played his final game in the majors in 2010, but years later big leaguers still swap stories about his arm. One of Guillen’s uncorkings—on April 27, 1998, from the rightfield warning track to third base, on the fly, to cut down Colorado’s Neifi Perez— was in 2011 named “the most unbelievable throw of all time” in a package produced by the MLB Network.

²
Rose Jr. had also played for the Reds in spring training that year, five months earlier. In that exhibition game, against the Rangers in Port Charlotte, Fla., Pete Jr. played third base, Eduardo played first base, and Davey Concepcíon, another son of a Big Red Machinist, played shortstop. Aaron Boone, brother of then Reds’ second baseman Bret Boone, played second base and Stephen Larkin, Barry’s brother, was the DH. “The Rangers weren’t happy,” Eduardo recalls. “They were saying how it was like an insult or a charade or something. They had a good lineup—Will Clark, Pudge Rodriguez, Mickey Tettleton. Only thing is, that day the charade won.” In a 10–7 final, Pete Jr. homered, singled and made a few plays. “I knew I had it in me,” he told
The Columbus
(Ohio)
Dispatch.

Chapter 20

¹
Even nine years later, Warren Greene, who was one of Rose’s representatives when
My Prison Without Bars
came out, maintained, straight face and all, that Rose “had no desire to have the book come out when it did. He would have liked it to be at a different date.” Greene added, “I don’t know why people got so upset with him about it.”

²
Despite having a multiple-week bestseller, Rodale sold only about 20% of the 500,000 copies it had printed. The book helped raise Rodale’s profile in the publishing world, but, given the large advance,
Prison
itself did not come close to making a bottom-line profit.

Chapter 22

¹
Not every Hall of Famer takes part in the late-night gatherings of course. Willie Mays, who is in his 80s and whose eyesight is considerably less than it was, stayed upstairs and received guests at certain times in his room. He had a small entourage close to him, including a couple of bodyguards, and there was some food out on the table. When people came in they were led to Mays’s chair to be introduced or recognized. “It was like going to see the Pope,” said one visitor after coming back down to the Hawkeye.

²
Vilacky also has some non-Rose items, including a photograph of him and his business partner Tom Catal with Mickey Mantle that’s framed along with a golf scorecard. It’s inscribed, “To Tom and Andy: I can’t believe I only won $20, you lucky assholes. Mickey Mantle.”

³
This wax display conjures a scene that was reportedly envisioned by some members of the staff at the Hall of Fame. In 2004, when
My Prison Without Bars
came out, several older inductees, notably Bob Feller and Robin Roberts, had reiterated their objections to Rose and made clear they would not attend his induction ceremony were he ever to have one. According to a
Hartford Courant
article by longtime baseball writer Jack O’Connell, a Hall of Fame official told him, “…we have imagined a ceremony where 200,000 people stare down at [Hall chairman] Jane Clark and Pete.” Meaning that the stage would be devoid of any other Hall of Famers, and also that such a prospect was not something the Hall was keen on. It’s a telling comment for another reason: the guess of 200,000 attendees. That would be Rose all right; the largest crowd ever at an induction ceremony was 82,000 to see Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. go in in 2007.

⁴
The question of how to render the steroid era has faced other baseball collectors. At the remarkable Green Diamond Gallery in Cincinnati, owner Bob Crotty has hanging above a “memorable moments” wall the jerseys of Bonds, Sosa, Palmeiro, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens and several others. He says they’re up there to represent “the black cloud that hangs over baseball,” and he has run out of room for new additions. The jersey of two-time offender Manny Ramirez, for example, hangs elsewhere. “These guys,” says Crotty pointing up at the black cloud with a laugh, “these are just the founding members.”

⁵
Kim has made it her business to understand Pete’s plight and the circumstances around his banishment, though she’s sometimes misinformed on the details. “He did not get banned for gambling, you know,” she said to me. “They couldn’t find anything! He got banned because he hung around with undesirables. Later he admitted to the commissioner that he bet, but at the time he got banned they didn’t know that at all.” Wait, all Pete did to get kicked out of the game was hang around the wrong kind of guys? “Yes, that’s what did it. I’ve talked about this with Pete a few times.” When you ask Kim whether she has ever had a chance to look over the Dowd Report herself, she says, “Not really.”

⁶
In September of 2013, Rose was also permitted to take part in a multiday event at the Reds ballpark, surrounding the unveiling of a sculpture of Joe Morgan. The occasion included two on-field reunions of the Great Eight—the position players Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Joe Morgan, Pete Rose, Davey Concepcíon, George Foster, César Gerónimo and Ken Griffey, who formed arguably the strongest lineup in baseball history in the mid- 70s. It was the first time they had all been together, Morgan said, “since the last day of the ’76 season.” For a time the Reds weren’t sure whether Rose could participate, but Morgan has a long and amicable relationship with Selig and he appealed to the commissioner directly. “I saw him in Cooperstown on induction weekend, and I said, ‘I need for Pete to be able to be on the field with me for this,’ ” says Morgan. “And he said O.K.” There were restrictions however. While the other seven alumni were free to go into the Reds clubhouse or to linger in the dugout, Rose was not. He was led carefully to the specific places he needed to be—the base of Morgan’s sculpture, the press room, the tunnel leading onto the field—and he was not to stray. Another of the commissioner’s clear conditions for allowing Rose to take part, the Reds say, was that Rose, under no circumstances, was to be given a microphone on the field.

Chapter 23

¹
Although Rose Jr. embraces his role in developing players—“Anytime a kid moves up you feel a little lift, like you’ve helped the organization,” he says—he can have a hard time stomaching the losing himself. Firm but controlled with his players, accessible and plainspoken in his tutorials, he is not one to suffer nonchalance or incompetence. After one lethargic Bristol loss in 2012 he locked the field house door and lit into the team, then made the players run laps around the field. During a game against Johnson City, Rose Jr. got ejected for arguing a blown call at first base. “It’s not the first time and it’s not going to be the last time,” he said.

²
In the 2012 Bristol game program, incidentally, Petey’s personal biographical sketch was comically wrong. His wife’s name appeared as Linda, the information about his children and where he attended school was way off. A list of his father’s statistical achievements, however—and this was also included in Petey’s bio—was spot-on.

Chapter 24

¹
Though a movie opportunity did not arise and Cara has not continued to find roles in television, she has maintained an artistic side. She has taken intensive voice lessons and under the name Cara Chea posted a catchy, original pop song, “Never Know” on the independent music site
Reverbnation.com
. A Myspace music page on which she goes by “Ms. Rose” also features seven other original songs, titled: “Move On,” “I’m Alone,” “The Way I Am,” “Broken,” “Contradiction,” “OhMioDio” and “In Darkness.” In 2010, as Cara Rose, she produced for a film class a one minute, 23 second horror short called
Nolan: The Evil Gnome
in which Pete appears, fleetingly, as a coroner.

²
Away from the signing table, Rose “sightings” in Las Vegas are legion, stories swapped by the common man. This person saw Rose stepping off an escalator and got him to sign an old Phillies game program. That one asked Rose for an autograph in the parking lot and he instead wrote down his hours at Mandalay Place. Another person spotted Rose at a slot machine—truly rare; it’s not Pete’s game—and took a photo with him. Someone else came upon Rose trundling along in the evening after work, the fedora on his head and a bag of takeout in his hand. One time Pete was walking around a hotel lobby in a purple velour jogging suit; another time in silk pajamas. Etc., etc. You hear tales tall and true and wonderful. Like this: “I was with some friends in a nightclub in Vegas, about 2008, and a midget walked in,” says Kevin Wassong, a media executive in his mid-40s from New York. “Behind him came a normal sized guy and then behind him another guy who was absolutely huge, like a Sumo wrestler, tall and maybe 400 pounds. It was bizarre. And they were all wearing tuxedos! I looked again and realized that the middle guy was Pete Rose. We were like, what the F?”

³
During the filming of TLC’s
Pete Rose: Hits & Mrs.
, neither Dave nor his older sister Caryl—whom Dave talks to just about every week—were ever even mentioned. You might have thought Pete was an only child. “That’s because he knows if they get me on camera, I’ll steal the damn show!” Dave says with a laugh.