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With a Pencil, a Bat and Two Hits, Rose Finally Ties Cobb

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<i> Times Staff Writer </i>

Big shot Marge Schott has a big dog. The St. Bernard’s name is Schottzie, which is German for “little sweetheart.” The woman who owns the dog is a rich Cincinnati auto dealer who also happens to own the Cincinnati Reds.

Marge Schott went to a Bengals football game Sunday in Cincinnati. She took the dog with her.

Another of her little sweethearts, Pete Rose, was playing ball Sunday in faraway Chicago. Marge Schott was surprised and displeased by this, because Pete was not supposed to be playing. He was supposed to be resting up for the Reds’ next series, back home in Cincinnati, where he would break Ty Cobb’s all-time hit record.

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But when Schott turned on her radio, there was Rose, playing first base. He came to the plate in the first inning and, crack , there went hit No. 4,190, a single to left. He came to the plate in the fifth inning and crack, there went hit No. 4,191, a single to right.

The woman saw red.

According to Rose, his boss immediately started making phone calls. She rang up Bill Bergesch, the Reds’ general manager, and told him she really wasn’t crazy about Pete playing. She rang up Jim Ferguson, the club’s publicity director, and told him she really wasn’t crazy about Pete playing. And wouldn’t somebody please be sweet enough to go tell this to Pete?

“Here I am, trying to please everybody and I got 30,000 yelling for me here and one lady back in Cincinnati who, every time I get a hit, she’s kicking her dog,” Rose said after Sunday’s game at Wrigley Field.

Greatly relieved, then, was this lady when Rose, after getting two singles off Chicago starter Reggie Patterson to tie Cobb’s record, failed in two final chances to break it. He grounded sharply to short against pitcher Lary Sorensen in the seventh inning, and then--after a 2-hour 4-minute rain delay--Rose struck out swinging against Cub relief ace Lee Smith.

With a week’s worth of games coming up in Cincinnati against the Padres and Dodgers, Rose would have to be bitten by a mad St. Bernard to be kept from breaking Cobb’s record in his hometown.

He says he will not be in the starting lineup tonight against San Diego lefty Dave Dravecky, but then again, he hadn’t planned on playing Sunday, either. Only when Cub lefty Steve Trout fell off a bicycle Saturday night, hurting his hand, did Rose pencil himself back into the lineup.

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“If I find out that pitcher doesn’t have a bicycle . . . “ Marge Schott told a Cincinnati reporter.

Although Rose struck out in the ninth inning, the Reds did manage to push a run across to tie the game, 5-5. That is where it stands, because darkness caused the game to be called off after the Cubs batted in their half of the ninth.

The teams are not scheduled to meet again this season, but will do so in October if it affects the National League West race. There were conflicting reports from league and club officials as to whether both sides would start from scratch as a 163rd game or resume from the point where Sunday’s game ended.

What was agreed upon, though, was that all records from Sunday’s game are official. Some question now exists as to the sequence of Rose’s hits--would a hit in extra innings of an October makeup date actually be his 4,192nd?--but one point was made perfectly clear: Sunday’s hits count.

Clear was hardly the word for the skies. When Rose batted against the 95-m.p.h. fastballs of Smith, it was just short of 6 p.m. in Chicago’s favorite dark park. “Not very good conditions, and then, when he struck me out, he took something off it,” Rose said. “Man, it was tough to see.”

More than one joke was made about the wrath of Ty Cobb, tossing thunderbolts from the heavens and so forth, particularly when stormy weather appeared so soon after Rose’s record-tying hit. A hard rain thoroughly soaked the crowd of 28,269, and dark clouds and lightning made Wrigley Field temporarily look like Dracula’s castle.

When Rose hit a sharp liner past Cub first baseman Leon Durham into right field to tie the record, the fans gave him a long, standing ovation, which he acknowledged by tipping his cap. Durham walked over to the young pitcher, Patterson, and told him jokingly that Rose now owed him a dinner.

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“I was going to go over and shake his hand, but I stopped,” Patterson said. “I don’t know why. I guess I was concentrating on getting out the next hitter. It was a history-making event that people wanted to see. I’d love to see him do it here. I got it where I wanted, but it was a little up in the strike zone. It was a screwball.”

Hall of Fame shortstop Lou Boudreau, now a Cub broadcaster, said on the radio: “Every arm in the park’s got goose pimples.” He also said--and somewhere, Marge Schott was agreeing--that no one would blame Rose if he decided to remove himself from the game.

Rose said that he never considered removing himself after getting his first hit but said at least one of his teammates did.

“When I got the hit, Dave Parker came up to me and said, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it.’ I said, ‘I gotta. We’re trying to win the game.’ He said, ‘You’re gonna make my all-gutty team when I retire.’ ”

But Buddy Bell tagged a three-run homer, cutting the Cub lead from 5-1 to 5-4, and Rose, whose team is trying to catch the Dodgers, felt it was important to hang in there.

Cub Manager Jim Frey, who attended the same high school that Rose did, Western Hills in Cincinnati, said Rose “showed his honesty” in remaining in the game. For his part, Frey did not send any left-handed pitchers into the game, in which case Rose might have sent up Tony Perez to pinch-hit for himself.

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“I wanted to see Pete get the record here,” Frey freely admitted.

Against Sorensen in the seventh, Rose ran the count to 2-and-1, then took a tremendous rip, fouling the ball back. On the fifth pitch, he hit one hard and fair but directly at shortstop Shawon Dunston, who threw him out.

Sorensen, who had already had a bad week, having been named in testimony during baseball’s drug-related courtroom hearings in Pittsburgh, escaped the fate of becoming the man who gave up the Ty-breaking hit. “Nervous?” Sorensen asked. “Me? Nah. I was more nervous that he had that big Parker coming up behind him and I didn’t want him on base.”

In a more serious vein, Sorensen said: “Absolutely, it was a real special moment. I got to pitch on Carl Yastrzemski’s last day in Boston, and now this. Pete Rose has got a special quality about him, and if he’d gotten the hit off of me, I guess it would have been a big deal for me, too. Anytime you got 70 reporters in your face asking you how you feel about something, I guess it’s a big deal.”

Lee Smith got off the hook in the ninth by striking out Rose, but was not as happy-go-lucky about it as Sorensen, having permitted the game-tying run to score.

For Rose, it was another good day at the office. “It’s another big one,” Rose said later. “There was 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, and now this one. They’re all steppingstones.”

And if a certain Marge Schott had wanted to talk to him on the telephone during the game, to ask him if he would mind taking himself out of the game, would Pete Rose have taken the call?

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“No,” he said.

She might have to send him to obedience school.

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