ATLANTA — How the hell are we supposed to remember Pete Rose?
Do we remember Rose — who died Monday at the age of 83 — as “Charlie Hustle,” the grittiest, hardest-skulled ballplayer in baseball history, a man who by sheer force of will claimed baseball’s all-time hits record? Do we remember him as an unrepentant gambler, a man who compromised the integrity of himself and his sport by betting on his own team, refusing every effort at atonement? Do we remember him as a Neanderthalic throwback, an often cruel man accused of crimes far worse than gambling on baseball? Each part is essential to understanding the whole picture, the glory and the tragedy and the farce that was the life of Pete Rose.
There’s an understandable tendency, when a notable figure dies, to remember them at their best, to speak no ill of the dead. But Rose’s best was inextricable from his worst. You can’t fairly tell the story of Rose without venturing deep into his ills. Yes, his style of play was electric, even transcendent, and his single-minded pursuit of Ty Cobb’s career hits record was a thrilling seasons-long demonstration of willpower.
But you can’t stop there. You can’t praise him for his grit and wave away everything else — which included repeated, willful, extensive violations of baseball’s cardinal rule, the ban on gambling. You can’t wave Rose’s sins away just because baseball — like all other sports — has surrendered the moral high ground on gambling by aligning with sportsbooks. (No matter what fans can do in the stands, players still can’t gamble. No exceptions, no gray area.)
Rose was banned in 1989, and he spent the next 30-plus years attempting the classic wrongdoer’s sleight-of-hand — I didn’t do it … OK, I did it, but it wasn’t that bad … Fine, it was bad but others have done so much worse. He spent years denying, then justifying, then comparing his scandal to those of PED users and sign-stealers. No effort worked because no effort ever seemed genuine.
Rose never seemed to understand how much he enraged people by his utter unwillingness to show remorse. Or — and this is honestly more likely — he probably enjoyed upsetting baseball’s glasses-wearing executive types. He surely wondered, How do guys who hadn’t swung a bat since Little League, who never got dirt on their precious tweed jackets, get to pass judgment on Charlie [expletive]ing Hustle?
Because they, unlike Rose, recognized that there’s a higher standard in baseball than just “win.” The commissioner who banned Rose in 1989 was A. Bartlett Giamatti, a former Harvard professor and president — in other words, the absolute foul-pole-to-foul-pole opposite of the grimy, gritty, blue-collar-in-a-Reds-uniform Rose. Giamatti didn’t have the power to compel Rose to confess, but he did have the power to excommunicate Charlie Hustle.
In the intervening years since the ban, with every new commissioner and every new baseball scandal, Rose attempted to plead, argue and cajole his way back into baseball, with the ultimate goal of enshrinement in the Hall of Fame. All efforts failed, and Rose, in response, spent year after year signing autographs outside the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown as others were enshrined. If that sounds like a sad, pathetic attempt at grasping for a shard of reflected glory, well … you’re absolutely right.
Word of Rose’s death began filtering out just as the Braves and Mets wrapped up their bizarre, glorious playoff seeding doubleheader in Atlanta. Since both teams won postseason berths, both teams sprayed Champagne and smoked cigars in their plastic-wrapped locker rooms — the same kind of locker rooms where, all over the country and for decades on end, hang signs declaring gambling a forbidden activity. Again: No gray area.
In a very real way, the joyful Mets-Braves games illustrate one of the most tragic elements of the Rose saga. The man denied himself the opportunity to rejoin the game he loved, the game that lifted him up, the game that he enhanced and glorified. He had every opportunity to stop the rationalizations, stop the what-abouts, stop the lies and exaggerations, and minimizations. He didn’t.
Rose, the player, loved games like Monday’s, where neither team admitted defeat, where both teams summoned up something deep within themselves to fight onward to triumph. Rose, the gambler, probably would have laid a few Benjamins on the Mets to lose Game 2 after winning Game 1. And Rose, the victim, would have probably found a way to make the day about the injustices visited on him.
Rose’s playing exploits deserve enshrinement in the Hall of Fame. So do his crimes against the game he loved. Baseball fans of future eras, who won’t have memories of Rose in his playing days, who won’t have the same aversion to gambling, need to understand both the man’s inspiring talent and his ruinous, self-inflicted spiral. His story — all of his story — is essential to understanding the game of baseball, a game that both tests and reveals character.
Pete Rose is gone now. He’ll never have the chance to set the record straight. And given all the opportunities he had to clear his name, that probably suits him just fine.
