There’s a wonderful line in one of my all-time favorite movies, “My Favorite Year,” when the legendary movie star Alan Swann has skipped out on the television show he was supposed to guest star in.
Couldn't do a 40th Anniversary celebration due to COVID-19. And 2021 wasn't viable because COVID still affected attendance early in the season, there probably wasn't enough time to plan the event, and the 1980 team are all senior citizens so bringing them into the ballpark during a pandemic probably wasn't a good idea. So here we are in 2022.
The team's excuse for inviting Rose was that his teammates wanted him there. The team spokesperson, quoted in the Philadelphia Daily News by Alex Coffey, said "In stark contrast to the Wall of Fame award which honors an individual player, this weekend is a team celebration and reunion...Pete was a leader of the team and an essential member of it." Coffey includes several other quotes that show the organization was tone deaf.
I suppose this is one where we're not supposed to comment. That being anything but outraged at Pete Rose is unacceptable. But in judging people, people go on their personal experience with them, whether that's in person or through the media. They go on that, and just not on what they've heard and not only based on what the person has done. Very often, you are supposed to be outraged by Rose, but you don't really aren't (I know; I should just speak for myself). You see the guy there, and the idea of him as a devil or even a jerk doesn't add up.
I know he was on amphetamines, but you think it was easy to play as hard as Pete Rose did? To never take a play off? I think there was great good in him, along with great deficits. He was also generally nice to people, and that explains some of his former popularity. You can't be a phony and keep that up for 30 years. It was genuine good feeling.
There were real reasons to like Pete Rose. People didn't have to try hard to. It wasn't just because he was a very good ballplayer.
I remember Bill Belichik once drafted a player who carried the all-too-common dirty laundry in his bio. And the team's defense was, well, he has good FOOTBALL character. I'm not saying that justified drafting him, but there it is. You can try to distort it, and not see him clearly, but Rose had good BASEBALL character, beyond his baseball ability. He was, and is, a child. He never grew up, he never progressed, he never learned. He was shallow and not fully formed. Why did he do the bad things that he did? I would say a combination of that, and the permissive and backwards baseball culture of the time, which thank God, does seem to be getting better. And if it's not, it certainly seems to use that it is, because we are at least forward from that time.
Choosing between Rose and Cobb as a person, I choose Rose. And Rose versus Lenny Dykstra? Not even close. They have the same personality, but Dykstra is the uncontrolled cancer years later.
Idk: Statutory rape and human trafficking is a pretty big cherry on top for Rose. And being nice to fans who are paying for an autograph & a picture isn't exactly a high bar. That's what's always shocked me. How low of a bar people set for Pete Rose. I'm not saying people can't make mistakes & that we shouldn't forgive people. But, I mean..... really?
There is zero doubt that Rose is an addict and has no impulse control. Gambling, women, whatever. He's his own worst enemy.
But...
Here it sounds like most of what "went wrong" here involves the response of OTHER people who simply seem to think hounding Pete Rose is a fun sport. You don't have to support or believe him to think it's ok if he's just in the room with the rest of his team, esp. when THEY wanted them there.
Saying that the Phillies "should have known" Rose would cause trouble here is a little like killing your parents and throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you're an orphan.
How confident are people that John Dowd, the esteemed counsel for Trump, hasn’t made this whole thing up? And if he didn’t, why didn’t he report it when it may have been within the statute of limitations?
Well, there IS corroborating evidence. All I can say for Rose is that he was, sadly, far from alone in cavorting with underage women. It's hard to read a book about baseball in the 60s and 70s where this wasn't going on.
Maybe I am being too cynical, but it doesn’t seem out of the realm if Dowd got a random woman to sign a sworn statement that was totally fabricated. She’d remain anonymous since it was filed under seal. Rose would never be able to remember one way or another whether they’d been together.
Are you forgetting that Rose sued for defamation and there was enough evidence for a judge of Dowd's claim that it was thrown out? I don't think judges tend to be naive and not understand that statements can be fabricated.
42 is the answer to the Ultimate Question of life, the universe and everything. Of course you celebrate the Hitchhiker Anniversary! Who the hell is Jasper anyway??!
It is interesting that Joe quoted Bill Conlin in the Texas v. California preview a few days ago. Conlin, a long-time sportswriter and later frequent guest on ESPN's Sports Reporters, was accused late in life by half a dozen women of sexually molesting them when they were children. It seemed strange that Joe would feel the need to quote this guy, you could find a lot of people with quotes criticizing Nolan Ryan for his (supposed) pitching faults.
Thanks Scott. Any sane person knows what Rose was, is, and will always will be. I used to really enjoy Joe’s writing. You nailed it-he seems almost obsessed with letting us know how morally superior he is. I cancelled my subscription today. It’s a shame because Joe is one of the better writers out there when he wants to be.
Guessing you actually didn’t want to seem as ignorant as those you’re smearing with your super-wide brush, but I actually think those populations are probably quite different FROM each other. Thanks for sharing.
Quite different? Both groups are only willing to believe one of the biggest liars ever to walk the earth. Both eagerly overlook everything terrible about the man, neither seem to have the slightest smidgen of principles.
It is interesting that Joe’s piece on Pete Rose draws almost five times the number of comments as the All-State Tournament championship recap (at this point). People love to talk about Pete Rose.
When he played I admired his hustle, his durability, his willingness to move to a new position when the team needed him to change (2B, 3B, OF, 1B), and his determination to compete and win. I wanted him to retire in 1981 or 1982, but I understood his desire to get the hit record.
Since he was banned from baseball each new revelation has been disappointing. At this point I hope he would just stay out of sight, but I know he will disappoint there as well.
Just wondering, did Steve Carlton come to the Jasper anniversary celebration?
A couple of things, starting with the perhaps least important: That celebration was supposed to be for the 40th anniversary of that team, but something called COVID got in the way. I came of age with that team. Any chance to commemorate what they meant to Philadelphia (and me) is welcome.
As for Rose, he has always been a pig, an animal - and that's an insult to animals. I enjoy the WAR statistic, but perhaps on-the-decline Pete Rose's contribution to the 1980 Phils is better measured by what teammates like Mike Schmidt said about him. The author of The Baseball 100 surely can acknowledge that more goes on in the game beside the game's metrics.
If I'm sounding like a the worst homer Phillies phan by this point, I'm sorry. I don't condone ANYTHING about Pete Rose, other than his performance as a baseball player. (I just read Game of Shadows last week and thought about how Giants fans dealt with Bonds. Yesterday's inclusion of Rose answered my question.) What he said to the reporter was bad enough, but you should have seen/heard how miserable he was when he joined the TV broadcast booth for an inning, dropping curse words and not being capable of engaging like a civil human being. Or a barnyard animal.
What's bugging me about today's coverage of yesterday's mostly behind-the-scenes Pete Rose rhetorical atrocities is the notion that that stuff "ruined" the celebration. I wonder if it really did - and I'm not trying to shoot the messenger (ie, media) here for reporting this stuff.
As a viewer of the pregame festivities from the comfort of my couch - and the parade of gracious former players who sat in with Tom McCarthy and John Kruk during the broadcast - I was able to hold my nose for the giant, smelly fart that is Pete Rose. The guys who helped turn my first team from the horrendous 1972 team of a few young guys with promise and the amazing newcomer Steve Carlton into a championship team (the first in our city) were my focus and, I would bet, the focus of the other viewers yesterday. When Jimmy Rollins showed up one inning to cut up with Larry Bowa and Gary Matthews, man, who cares about that miserable, old rental catalyst Pete Rose!
I guess what I'm saying is that Rose DIDN'T ruin everything that day was meant to be, at least for Phillies' fans who lived through that era. Will the Phillies learn from this and muzzle that creep, if he's still with us 8 years from now? Let's hope. As the party actually went for someone who watched it all and thought about loved ones and special times, I say it was a great day. I just had to light a few matches any time Rose walked by.
Mr Rose has an illness and combined with being a horrible human being will be forever confined to similar conversations such as Shoeless Joe etc. I truly feel sorry for this great American anomaly. Hero to few and a tragic laughingstock to the rest of us.
Agree that Rose has a serious illness that harms mostly himself these days but as Joe knows that same people who hustled him out of baseball are all too glad to take the Bally's Benjamin's.
Yeah I could do without hearing from Pete Rose again.
Was never a big fan, even though I'm a huge Philly fan. Don't care if he ever gets to the Hall of Fame and would have preferred the Phils not invite him to Alumni weekend despite his teammate's wishes.
I think the "he wasn't even good" is a little disingenuous though. Yes he didn't have great #'s, especially looking at modern analytics, but to me its similar to the Steve Garvey discussion Joe has had in the past.
Steve Garvey did everything that was expected in the 70's, got 200 hits, hit home runs, won 4 gold gloves, drove in 100 runs. He pretty much was a Hall of Famer until people looked closer and saw he didn't hit that many homers for a first baseman, grounded into a lot of double plays, wasn't really that good a firs basemen in retrospect and never walked. I don't think he is a Hall of Famer, but he was regarded very highly until the later 1980's.
Yes Rose wasn't a good player by modern metrics, but I'm not sure replacing him with a 3 WAR first basemen who hits .280 with 15 homers and some walks makes them a better team. They had that guy, Richie Hebner, and didn't win despite having a better team in my opinion from 1976-1978.
In 1980 Schmidt went to the next level and Carlton was still Lefty, but their amazing bullpen was reduced to just Tug and an aging Ron Reed and the rotation was VERY thin after Carlton. Rose hitting .280 with no power or speed or defense wasn't what put them over the top. I know it can't be measured, but everyone is adamant that Rose being a pain in the a** and willing them to win was a huge factor.
Now he came over in 79 and they lost the division to the We Are Family Buccos so that argument may not hold much water although Pete was much better, hitting .331 and leading the league in on base percentage.
All that being said he sucks and I'm perfectly willing to never discuss him again.
Great piece, Joe. Pete Rose is the most-loved very good player in MLB history. When I had a radio show I used to kill slow days by making the case that with a lifetime average of .302 he didn't belong in the HOF regardless of the ban. Drove people crazy.
Pretty much nails it.
“See, Rose was NOT there to talk about something that happened 50 years ago.
He was there to talk about something that happened 42 years ago. And don’t you forget it.”
Couldn't do a 40th Anniversary celebration due to COVID-19. And 2021 wasn't viable because COVID still affected attendance early in the season, there probably wasn't enough time to plan the event, and the 1980 team are all senior citizens so bringing them into the ballpark during a pandemic probably wasn't a good idea. So here we are in 2022.
The team's excuse for inviting Rose was that his teammates wanted him there. The team spokesperson, quoted in the Philadelphia Daily News by Alex Coffey, said "In stark contrast to the Wall of Fame award which honors an individual player, this weekend is a team celebration and reunion...Pete was a leader of the team and an essential member of it." Coffey includes several other quotes that show the organization was tone deaf.
I suppose this is one where we're not supposed to comment. That being anything but outraged at Pete Rose is unacceptable. But in judging people, people go on their personal experience with them, whether that's in person or through the media. They go on that, and just not on what they've heard and not only based on what the person has done. Very often, you are supposed to be outraged by Rose, but you don't really aren't (I know; I should just speak for myself). You see the guy there, and the idea of him as a devil or even a jerk doesn't add up.
I know he was on amphetamines, but you think it was easy to play as hard as Pete Rose did? To never take a play off? I think there was great good in him, along with great deficits. He was also generally nice to people, and that explains some of his former popularity. You can't be a phony and keep that up for 30 years. It was genuine good feeling.
There were real reasons to like Pete Rose. People didn't have to try hard to. It wasn't just because he was a very good ballplayer.
I remember Bill Belichik once drafted a player who carried the all-too-common dirty laundry in his bio. And the team's defense was, well, he has good FOOTBALL character. I'm not saying that justified drafting him, but there it is. You can try to distort it, and not see him clearly, but Rose had good BASEBALL character, beyond his baseball ability. He was, and is, a child. He never grew up, he never progressed, he never learned. He was shallow and not fully formed. Why did he do the bad things that he did? I would say a combination of that, and the permissive and backwards baseball culture of the time, which thank God, does seem to be getting better. And if it's not, it certainly seems to use that it is, because we are at least forward from that time.
Choosing between Rose and Cobb as a person, I choose Rose. And Rose versus Lenny Dykstra? Not even close. They have the same personality, but Dykstra is the uncontrolled cancer years later.
Idk: Statutory rape and human trafficking is a pretty big cherry on top for Rose. And being nice to fans who are paying for an autograph & a picture isn't exactly a high bar. That's what's always shocked me. How low of a bar people set for Pete Rose. I'm not saying people can't make mistakes & that we shouldn't forgive people. But, I mean..... really?
There is zero doubt that Rose is an addict and has no impulse control. Gambling, women, whatever. He's his own worst enemy.
But...
Here it sounds like most of what "went wrong" here involves the response of OTHER people who simply seem to think hounding Pete Rose is a fun sport. You don't have to support or believe him to think it's ok if he's just in the room with the rest of his team, esp. when THEY wanted them there.
Saying that the Phillies "should have known" Rose would cause trouble here is a little like killing your parents and throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you're an orphan.
How confident are people that John Dowd, the esteemed counsel for Trump, hasn’t made this whole thing up? And if he didn’t, why didn’t he report it when it may have been within the statute of limitations?
Well, there IS corroborating evidence. All I can say for Rose is that he was, sadly, far from alone in cavorting with underage women. It's hard to read a book about baseball in the 60s and 70s where this wasn't going on.
Maybe I am being too cynical, but it doesn’t seem out of the realm if Dowd got a random woman to sign a sworn statement that was totally fabricated. She’d remain anonymous since it was filed under seal. Rose would never be able to remember one way or another whether they’d been together.
Are you forgetting that Rose sued for defamation and there was enough evidence for a judge of Dowd's claim that it was thrown out? I don't think judges tend to be naive and not understand that statements can be fabricated.
The parties agreed to dismiss the case (I.e., it settled). It wasn’t dismissed by the judge.
42 is the answer to the Ultimate Question of life, the universe and everything. Of course you celebrate the Hitchhiker Anniversary! Who the hell is Jasper anyway??!
The quote from Swann is an actual quote of David Niven about his friend Errol Flynn.
The question to ask the Phillies is, Did you pay Rose an appearance fee?
And "My Favorite Year" is criminally underrated.
It's sad how many people feel a need to continually point out how they are morally superior to Pete Rose. Let it go.
It is interesting that Joe quoted Bill Conlin in the Texas v. California preview a few days ago. Conlin, a long-time sportswriter and later frequent guest on ESPN's Sports Reporters, was accused late in life by half a dozen women of sexually molesting them when they were children. It seemed strange that Joe would feel the need to quote this guy, you could find a lot of people with quotes criticizing Nolan Ryan for his (supposed) pitching faults.
Thanks Scott. Any sane person knows what Rose was, is, and will always will be. I used to really enjoy Joe’s writing. You nailed it-he seems almost obsessed with letting us know how morally superior he is. I cancelled my subscription today. It’s a shame because Joe is one of the better writers out there when he wants to be.
Sorry that your favorite statutory rapist gets criticized by all the snowflakes in society.
And I subscribed twice!
People who still support Rose are no different than the troglodytes who still go to Trump rallies.
Guessing you actually didn’t want to seem as ignorant as those you’re smearing with your super-wide brush, but I actually think those populations are probably quite different FROM each other. Thanks for sharing.
Quite different? Both groups are only willing to believe one of the biggest liars ever to walk the earth. Both eagerly overlook everything terrible about the man, neither seem to have the slightest smidgen of principles.
People's obsession with Trump, both positive and negative, does seem similar to that with Rose. Let it go. It helps him more than it hurts him.
It is interesting that Joe’s piece on Pete Rose draws almost five times the number of comments as the All-State Tournament championship recap (at this point). People love to talk about Pete Rose.
When he played I admired his hustle, his durability, his willingness to move to a new position when the team needed him to change (2B, 3B, OF, 1B), and his determination to compete and win. I wanted him to retire in 1981 or 1982, but I understood his desire to get the hit record.
Since he was banned from baseball each new revelation has been disappointing. At this point I hope he would just stay out of sight, but I know he will disappoint there as well.
Just wondering, did Steve Carlton come to the Jasper anniversary celebration?
Lefty did show up. He joined the TV broadcast team for an inning, too, and even spoke comfortably.
A couple of things, starting with the perhaps least important: That celebration was supposed to be for the 40th anniversary of that team, but something called COVID got in the way. I came of age with that team. Any chance to commemorate what they meant to Philadelphia (and me) is welcome.
As for Rose, he has always been a pig, an animal - and that's an insult to animals. I enjoy the WAR statistic, but perhaps on-the-decline Pete Rose's contribution to the 1980 Phils is better measured by what teammates like Mike Schmidt said about him. The author of The Baseball 100 surely can acknowledge that more goes on in the game beside the game's metrics.
If I'm sounding like a the worst homer Phillies phan by this point, I'm sorry. I don't condone ANYTHING about Pete Rose, other than his performance as a baseball player. (I just read Game of Shadows last week and thought about how Giants fans dealt with Bonds. Yesterday's inclusion of Rose answered my question.) What he said to the reporter was bad enough, but you should have seen/heard how miserable he was when he joined the TV broadcast booth for an inning, dropping curse words and not being capable of engaging like a civil human being. Or a barnyard animal.
What's bugging me about today's coverage of yesterday's mostly behind-the-scenes Pete Rose rhetorical atrocities is the notion that that stuff "ruined" the celebration. I wonder if it really did - and I'm not trying to shoot the messenger (ie, media) here for reporting this stuff.
As a viewer of the pregame festivities from the comfort of my couch - and the parade of gracious former players who sat in with Tom McCarthy and John Kruk during the broadcast - I was able to hold my nose for the giant, smelly fart that is Pete Rose. The guys who helped turn my first team from the horrendous 1972 team of a few young guys with promise and the amazing newcomer Steve Carlton into a championship team (the first in our city) were my focus and, I would bet, the focus of the other viewers yesterday. When Jimmy Rollins showed up one inning to cut up with Larry Bowa and Gary Matthews, man, who cares about that miserable, old rental catalyst Pete Rose!
I guess what I'm saying is that Rose DIDN'T ruin everything that day was meant to be, at least for Phillies' fans who lived through that era. Will the Phillies learn from this and muzzle that creep, if he's still with us 8 years from now? Let's hope. As the party actually went for someone who watched it all and thought about loved ones and special times, I say it was a great day. I just had to light a few matches any time Rose walked by.
Mr Rose has an illness and combined with being a horrible human being will be forever confined to similar conversations such as Shoeless Joe etc. I truly feel sorry for this great American anomaly. Hero to few and a tragic laughingstock to the rest of us.
Agree that Rose has a serious illness that harms mostly himself these days but as Joe knows that same people who hustled him out of baseball are all too glad to take the Bally's Benjamin's.
Totally agree as to the hypocrisy in the equation.
Yeah I could do without hearing from Pete Rose again.
Was never a big fan, even though I'm a huge Philly fan. Don't care if he ever gets to the Hall of Fame and would have preferred the Phils not invite him to Alumni weekend despite his teammate's wishes.
I think the "he wasn't even good" is a little disingenuous though. Yes he didn't have great #'s, especially looking at modern analytics, but to me its similar to the Steve Garvey discussion Joe has had in the past.
Steve Garvey did everything that was expected in the 70's, got 200 hits, hit home runs, won 4 gold gloves, drove in 100 runs. He pretty much was a Hall of Famer until people looked closer and saw he didn't hit that many homers for a first baseman, grounded into a lot of double plays, wasn't really that good a firs basemen in retrospect and never walked. I don't think he is a Hall of Famer, but he was regarded very highly until the later 1980's.
Yes Rose wasn't a good player by modern metrics, but I'm not sure replacing him with a 3 WAR first basemen who hits .280 with 15 homers and some walks makes them a better team. They had that guy, Richie Hebner, and didn't win despite having a better team in my opinion from 1976-1978.
In 1980 Schmidt went to the next level and Carlton was still Lefty, but their amazing bullpen was reduced to just Tug and an aging Ron Reed and the rotation was VERY thin after Carlton. Rose hitting .280 with no power or speed or defense wasn't what put them over the top. I know it can't be measured, but everyone is adamant that Rose being a pain in the a** and willing them to win was a huge factor.
Now he came over in 79 and they lost the division to the We Are Family Buccos so that argument may not hold much water although Pete was much better, hitting .331 and leading the league in on base percentage.
All that being said he sucks and I'm perfectly willing to never discuss him again.
Great piece, Joe. Pete Rose is the most-loved very good player in MLB history. When I had a radio show I used to kill slow days by making the case that with a lifetime average of .302 he didn't belong in the HOF regardless of the ban. Drove people crazy.
Great ball player,rotten person !