HE CAN HIT, BUT . . . Can He Manage? : Rose Has the Knowledge, Enthusiasm and Still the Great Will to Excel

It was the kind of game the Cincinnati manager could appreciate.

In the first place, his team won, 4-3, and there is nothing Pete Rose likes better than winning. Every time he takes the field, in fact, he thinks he’s going to win. That’s not so far-fetched, since of all the thousands of players who have played major league baseball for more than 100 years, nobody else has played in as many winning games--more than 1,900--as Peter Edward Rose.

“I worry about only one thing: winning the game,” he said.

In the second place, Rose got another hit, an infield single he called a Cincinnati chop, and next to winning, there is nothing he’d rather do than get a hit. Of all those thousands of players, nobody has more hits now than Rose. Sorry about that, Ty Cobb.

So winning and getting hits are nothing new to Rose.

What made this game against Atlanta particularly enjoyable for him, now that he is a manager, was the manner in which the Reds won it. It was, he said, a team victory in a game of individual skills.

“Our fundamentals were good,” Rose said. “We played good defense, we forced the Braves to use all their left-handed pinch-hitters, we didn’t walk many batters, we got a sacrifice bunt when we needed it, and the right batter (Dave Parker, the team’s hottest hitter who knocked in the winning run) was up at the right time in the ninth inning.”

Then Rose, sitting behind his desk in his Riverfront Stadium office wearing a T-shirt and little else, looked into the bright lights of the television cameras and grinned.

“I thought the whole game was kind of interesting,” he said.

Life almost always seems to be interesting to Pete Rose. He is an uncomplicated, one-dimensional fellow whose life is divided into two parts: baseball and what’s left. He is, he said, “just like any other guy with two arms and legs and 4,000 hits.”

To Rose his job is not work; it is pure joy. He is paid very well but he’d probably work for nothing. He is 44 going on 24, and now that he is a manager as well as a player, a job combination rarely given a man today, he has not lost any of the enthusiasm and spirit that drove him relentlessly to become one of the game’s best hitters. He is still baseball’s Charlie Hustle, and he has enough pride in the name to wear it on some of his T-shirts.

It was to learn how he is faring with the exigencies of his new job as manager that a reporter observed him at work for a few days in his hometown and sought views of his skill as a leader from players, coaches, team executives and reporters.

By all accounts, Rose is a hit as a manager. He got good marks from most observers even as he closed in on Cobb’s record of 4,191 hits. Few athletes could handle such a burden with the ease, grace and success with which Rose coped with it.

When the media blitz began, Vin Scully observed, “There is so much focus on his pursuit of Cobb’s record, that you forget what a great job (of managing) he has done.”

Rose appears to have taken on managing with the same enthusiasm with which he plays the game. Eager to learn, he leans heavily on the experience and advice of his coaches and he has sought the expertise of other managers he respects and admires. He gets along well with his players and, in an era when adversary relationships between managers and reporters are common, he has won the admiration and respect of the media, no easy trick today. In short, Pete Rose is as refreshing as a manager as he is a player.

And, while still learning how to manage on the job, he has led the Reds’ resurgence this season. The team has been a contender in the National League West, and its attendance, after a decline of more than 1 million in five years, is up almost 100,000 over 1984.

“I’ve been watching the town grow back into baseball,” he said. “The Reds lost so many games the past few years, people got used to it. But I knew all those people didn’t die. We had to get them back.”

Rose can’t hit or hustle for his players but his enthusiasm seems contagious, leading the Reds’ publicity department to boast: “The Hustle Is Back.”

Despite his part-time appearances at first base--he has been playing only against right-handed pitchers--and as a pinch-hitter, Rose makes it clear that he is a player-manager, not a manager-player, as club executives would have liked for him to be called.

Was it really 23 years ago that an eager, 21-year-old kid with a crewcut first appeared in the Reds’ lineup and amused everybody by racing full speed to first base on walks, sliding head-first into bases and knocking people down who got in his way? The game stopped snickering when it saw how well Pete Rose could hit.

After three years in the minor leagues, Rose played 157 games for the Reds in 1963, hit .273 and launched a career in which he has set more than a dozen major league records. He has played more than 500 games at each of five positions--first, second and third bases, left field and right field.

Not all his records were made with the bat. He has the highest fielding percentage of any outfielder who has played in at least 1,000 games, .991. And when he plays first base today, his defensive skills seem to be as sharp as ever.

Rose became a free agent at the end of the 1978 season and left his hometown for Philadelphia, where he played five seasons. He played at Montreal in 1984 until he became the Reds’ 39th manager on Aug. 16, adding his name to such familiar ones as Clark Griffith, Christy Mathewson, Chuck Dressen, Rogers Hornsby, Jimmy Dykes and Sparky Anderson.

With rookie Manager Rose calling the shots in the last 41 games of ‘84, the Reds won 19 and went 15-12 in September. He played in 26 games, hitting .365.

Player-managers are not common today. Before Rose, the last one in the major leagues was Don Kessinger of the Chicago White Sox in 1979. Joe Torre played only briefly while managing the New York Mets, also in the late 1970s.

But there have been some good ones, among them Ty Cobb, Jimmy Collins, Joe Cronin, Frankie Frisch, Mickey Cochrane, Rogers Hornsby, Bucky Harris, Lou Boudreau and Frank Robinson. Cobb and Hornsby both hit more than .400 while managing, and Boudreau hit .355, won the World Series and was voted the American League’s Most Valuable Player in 1948. Cochrane won two pennants at Detroit in 1934 and 1935 while hitting .320 and .319.

Cobb was 34 when he was named player-manager of the Detroit Tigers for the 1921 season. His salary of $35,000 made him the highest-paid player, and only John McGraw of the New York Giants earned more for managing.

On taking the job, Cobb told reporters: “I will not do anything to discourage my boys. And when I feel compelled to apply vile names to them to get action, that is the time to clear them off the club.”

Players in 1921 were different than they had been in the old days, in Cobb’s view. “Instead of an iron hand, encouragement and advice are the best practices in this day and generation,” he said.

In six years as a manager, Cobb’s teams won 479 games and lost 444. He finished second once, third twice, fourth once and sixth twice.

Rose’s office at Riverfront is cluttered with 8 or 10 pairs of shoes and about as many bats. It is only half as big as Tom Lasorda’s Dodger Stadium office. Rose’s has a small bathroom, a desk, three chairs, a small freezer and room to hang a half-dozen or so uniforms.

A reporter introduced himself to Rose and described his assignment because he wanted Rose to understand that when he asked a question he wouldn’t be second-guessing him.

“Remember one thing,” Rose replied. “I’m new at this job. I’m going to make mistakes. I don’t care who you are, you’re going to make mistakes. You just don’t want to make them over and over again. Managing is full of second-guessing. That’s how you learn.”

During the game that afternoon, Rose got up and walked the length of the dugout to pat Eddie Milner on the back after the Reds’ outfielder had sacrificed a runner to second, seemingly a routine play for a major leaguer.

To Rose, it was not a routine play. “It is getting harder and harder to bunt (because of artificial surfaces and good pitching),” he said. “I told Milner, ‘Nice bunt.’ That’s teamwork. I wanted him to know how important it was. If he doesn’t make that bunt, we lose the game.”

Milner was impressed. “Pete said that was an important play,’ he said. “Something like that motivates me.”

Ron Robinson, the Reds’ 6-foot 4-inch, 215-pound relief pitcher, walked into Rose’s office to show off a T-shirt emblazoned with “True Creature” across the front.

Rose had bought it for him in San Francisco.

The next afternoon, the Reds lost to the Braves, 2-1, and although he seemed to take the defeat calmly, Rose was not happy.

“In a 2-1 game we failed three times to get a sacrifice fly,” he said. “They did it once and that was the ball game. When you get the opportunities, you’ve got to execute. Every stolen base is important, every sacrifice fly is important.”

Then, in a change of mood that has become characteristic of Rose the manager, he defended his team.

“We gave up only two runs in nine innings to a good-hitting ballclub,” he said. “Sometimes you don’t get the sacrifice fly because of good pitching. It’s not always the failure of the offense. You can’t blame (Tony) Perez (who had popped up once with a runner on third). If Perez can’t get ‘em in, nobody can.”

The day before, Cincinnati pitcher Joe Price had thrown a fastball up in the strike zone to Atlanta’s Bob Horner, who knocked it into the left-field seats. The next time Horner was up, Price threw him the same pitch and Horner hit that one into the seats, too.

“That’s all right,” Rose said in defense of Price. “You don’t want him to scare you off your best pitch.”

In a game against the San Francisco Giants, won by the Reds, 7-6, Dave Parker ran through a coach’s signal and was thrown out at third base on a hit to right field. Rose defended Parker’s base running.

“That was a reaction play,” he said. “He saw the right fielder bobble the ball. They tell me the replay indicated he was safe.”

In the same game, the Reds misplayed an outfield fly and a ground ball to the pitcher into hits. Rose dismissed both plays as bad breaks.

Rose himself appeared to be guilty of questionable judgment on one play during the 2-1 loss to Atlanta. After walking, the manager went to second base on a double steal, and with first base open, the Braves then walked Parker, the Reds’ leading run producer.

Was it wise for him to steal and take the bat out of Parker’s hand? Rose was asked.

“They walked the go-ahead run in the sixth inning,” he said amiably. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. Sure, I could have stayed on first if I’d known they would do that.”

Asked why his two fastest players, Redus and Milner, aren’t asked to bunt more often, Rose replied, “I’d like to see them bunt more. Even if you foul it or miss it, it’s just as good as a bunt because you bring the infielders in.

“But we get into too many one-run games. Every time they come up, it seems like the tying run is on second or third base.”

Rose, in fact, said he didn’t think a manager should ever tell a batter to try to bunt for a hit. Still, he tries to set an example. At 44, 5-11 and 200 pounds, he is not shy about bunting for hits. “I’ll bunt all day if they’ll give it to me,” said the fellow who has more than 3,000 singles in the major leagues.

As he pursued Cobb’s record, Rose got a lot of walks, as many as 12 in one week, in fact.

“I’ll take a walk,” he said. “The record-watchers don’t want me to walk, but I want to get on base. A walk is as good as a hit. I swung at a 3-and-0 pitch once in my life.” Typically, he remember the game: Phillies vs. Montreal, 1979.

You soon get the idea that Rose has a long fuse on his temper. During a game he usually sits quietly at the left end of the dugout or stands with his arms draped over the railing. He doesn’t pace. Nor does he argue much with umpires. He never has, even as a full-time player.

“I have a problem with that,” he said when he was asked if he had been thrown out of a game as manager, which he hasn’t. “I have a hard time arguing over plays. I can’t go out there and argue if I think the umpire is right. The umpires don’t like to hear all that BS. You can’t change anything, and the replays usually show the umpire is right.”

He gave an example. “Last night on television I saw Lasorda argue over a play that the replay clearly showed the umpire was right.” It was apparent that Rose thought the argument was a waste of time.

Such unmanagerial behavior does not mean, however, that Rose never questions an umpire. In an early season game at Los Angeles, he argued mildly when the umpires allowed a Dodger baserunner to score after a spectator had touched a ball. He thought the ball had bounced into the seats.

Although Rose may not approve of Lasorda’s umpire-baiting, he has sought advice from the Dodger manager.

“I try to learn a lot from other managers like Lasorda, Dick Williams, Sparky Anderson and Chuck Tanner,” he said. “I’m like E.F. Hutton. When they talk, I listen. I have a lot of respect for their ability.”

Rose doesn’t think baseball players, and athletes in general, enjoy their sport as much as they once did, so he encourages the Reds to have some fun. “You probably have noticed that I try to keep these games as simple as I possibly can,” he said. “I try to keep my players relaxed. I want them to have fun. Sometimes there’s too much thinking going on.”

Going to the ballpark, even for Rose, “is not like a day on the beach. I don’t go to the park every day feeling good,” he said. “I get high on the uniform.” And managing, he has found, sometimes has its drawbacks.

Defeats are harder to take, for one. After the 2-1 loss to Atlanta, he said: “On the way home I’ll replay the game and tell myself it would have been better if I had done this instead of that.”

To Rose it is natural for a manager to take defeats harder than players. “A player might make two great plays and go 4 for 4 in a losing game,” he said. “Why will he think a lot about the loss?”

When Rose accepted the Reds’ offer to manage, he went to Anderson first for advice. “Pete, you know baseball,” Anderson told him. “The only advice I can give you is: Do what you want to do and don’t look in the mirror and worry about it.”

The hardest part of the job, he said, “is sending players back to the minors. I didn’t have to go through that when I was a player.”

Rose, bat in hand, hurries out to the field late one afternoon to keep an appointment with a women reporter from Dayton for a television interview. He already has filmed a Wheaties commercial that day, and a Newsweek photographer is in town to shadow him for a few days. Time magazine, preparing a cover story, has just finished with him.

Rose stands relaxed, leaning on the bat, answering the woman’s questions. Rose is seldom without a bat in his hands. He is always cleaning and polishing one with a towel so he can see the spot where he hits the ball. As he talks to the reporter he swings, even when he’s sitting down.

At one point in the interview Rose, who would not be starting that night, points at a clock on the scoreboard and says: “Look, it’s 4:46. I know right now that if the game is on the line in the seventh inning and there is a right-hander pitching, I’m going to be the pinch-hitter.”

Rose’s pregame time is monopolized by reporters and photographers every day. “It’s amazing how he spends so much time with the media and still manages the team,” said Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News, who has been covering the Reds for 13 years. “A guy from a 50-watt radio station will show up, and he will talk to him. He has time for everybody.”

Covering Rose is a treat, McCoy said, “although it can be a hassle because of all the out-of-town writers covering him.”

Cincinnati Enquirer columnist Tim Sullivan said: “He’s the easiest guy in sports to get along with. He drifts from one subject to another, and you can get six different stories in an hour.”

Sullivan wrote a rare critical commentary about Rose after the Reds lost a game, 17-9, early this season. Rose’s batting average had dropped to .246, and Sullivan advised him that he did not have the power or speed to play first base for a contending team and suggested he manage from the bench.

“It was not a popular thing to say,” Sullivan recalled. The columnist went on vacation, returned three weeks later and learned he was still a talk-show celebrity. “In the interim, Pete hit about .400, and that didn’t help my case,” Sullivan said. “I heard he wasn’t happy.”

Instead of getting angry, however, Rose confronted Sullivan and, the columnist said, “He debated every point very clinically. He debated it almost as if it was another player. I never felt any rancor, which was more than I expected.”

Rose’s patience is his biggest plus as a manager, said Marty Brennaman, who has broadcast Reds’ games for WLW for 12 years. “He is patient to a fault with his players,”

The demands on Rose’s time by the media are awesome, the broadcaster said. “Nobody in the game could do it as successfully as he has and still play and manage. I don’t know how he does it.”

How does he do it? “Once you get into it, it’s kinda fun,” Rose said.

Talking to reporters makes sense to Rose. “Cooperation with the media has made me a lot of money,” he said. “I don’t understand players today who, when asked a question, say ‘No comment.’ I don’t want anyone answering for me, so I talk.”

Tony Perez and Davey Concepcion were Rose’s teammates on the Reds’ pennant winning teams of the early 1970s. Has their relationship changed much, now that he is their boss?

“Whatever we did before, we do now,” Perez said. “Our relationship is the same. He hasn’t changed. He has a tough job, playing and managing, but he’s the same. He’s doing a good job.”

Concepcion said that their relationship is much the same, but the shortstop also said: “Maybe he is a little more conservative now that he’s the manager. If there’s a trade coming, he can’t talk to me about it like he used to. He doesn’t hang around too much. Now that he has an office he’s always in there, talking to writers.”

Rose is a good manager, Concepcion said, “But he can think a little bit better on the bench.”

The play of Concepcion this season is a good example of how the Reds are hustling more for Rose, reporter McCoy said. “Davey virtually had quit playing baseball. When Rose became manager, he went to him and said, ‘Davey, you’re not the player you used to be, and there is no reason you shouldn’t be.’ ”

McCoy agreed with Perez and Concepcion that Rose’s new status in the clubhouse hasn’t affected him. “I haven’t noticed any changes,” the reporter said. “And I’ve been looking for them.”

Is Concepcion right? Does Rose manage better from the bench?

“It’s no harder when I’m playing,” Rose said. “Actually it makes it seem that I’m more into the game. On the field, I think defense. In the dugout, it’s all offense. I know when I take the field if I have to make a pitching change or a double switch.”

One thing Rose said he has learned: “There’s too much going on out there for one man to do it all. A manager needs help, and I’ve got good help.”

Like other managers, Rose has a coach who helps him with the myriad details and options he faces every game. While Rose focuses on the play at hand, George Scherger looks ahead so he can advise his manager on his next move.

“George alerts me to my options,” Rose said. “I choose the option.”

Said Scherger, 64, who managed in the minor leagues for 22 years: “I really have to keep him abreast more when he’s playing to make sure he has the right pinch-hitters and pitchers available.”

Scherger, who Rose said, “has forgotten more baseball than I know.” gives his boss good marks as a manager. “He’s very observant. He always was as a player. But the big thing about him is, he’s very popular with his players. A team takes on the personality of the manager, and he helps them with his optimism and enthusiasm.”

Besides getting the respect of his players, a manager’s trickiest chore, probably, is handling pitchers. Nobody seems to be able to yank one at precisely the right time every time. Rose gets pitching advice from coach Jim Kaat, 45, who won 283 games in a 25-year major league career.

“I make suggestions and keep him up to date,” Kaat said. “I tell him who has been out a couple of days in a row and who we can’t use today. When he is playing, I get the pitchers started warming up but it’s his decision who to use.”

Asked to assess Rose as a manager, Kaat said: “I’d say he’s more like managers who managed when I came up in the early ‘60s. They didn’t make as many moves then; they’d leave the starter in longer. He stays with his pitchers. Nobody can say they don’t have an opportunity.”

Many stars of Rose’s stature do not want to become managers and some who have tried it have not been successful. Mediocre players seem to have made the best managers over the years.

Bob Howsam, who retired as president of the Reds in June, knew all this. Why, then, did he hire Rose to manage his team?

“I knew Pete as a player and I was aware of his dedication as a baseball man” Howsam said. “Players with great natural ability such as Stan Musial and Ted Williams didn’t have to think about what they were doing. Pete always had to work hard, as Walter Alston, Sparky Anderson and Tom Lasorda did.”

At first, Howsam talked to Rose only about managing but said: “I became convinced as I talked to him that it could be worked out for him to play, too. He has great desire.”

Said Howsam of Rose’s managerial skill: “He gives his players a winning approach to the game. You’re no better than the people you surround yourself with and Pete has good coaches and listens to them. He’s doing a fine job. You need experience to handle pitchers properly. He’ll make mistakes but he will not make them more than once. His inexperience bothered me; it would have been better if he had it. A manager needs to communicate with the media. Pete may be the best to do that since Casey Stengel.”

Rose’s enthusiasm rubs off on everybody, said his general manager, Bill Bergesch, a former Yankee vice president. “He makes you want to win.”

Besides hiring capable coaches, Bergesch said, Rose gives them a lot of authority.

Bergesch also said: “He openly admits he talks to managers he likes to learn more about his job. He has good relations with the front office; he’s responsive to our problems and he is a pleasure to work with. His inexperience does not show.”