Rose Isn’t Worried, Says: ‘We Expect to Win This Year’

Pete Rose looked surprised that someone would even wonder how, in the 45th spring of his life, he looks younger than he did the previous year.

“Don’t you believe this works?” Rose said, reaching into a duffel bag and pulling out a tube of Grecian Formula.

“Do you think I’m a false advertiser? Pretty soon, you’ll want me to bring my Wheaties down here and have me drinking Kool-Aid.”

Of course there’s less gray in his hair, Rose said. “I have less worries in the winter,” he said.

What’s to worry? The Hit is history, and so is Ty Cobb.

“There wasn’t no heat on me,” Rose said, dismissing the notion that last season’s pursuit of No. 4,192, with the whole world watching, might have put a strain on his nervous system.

“And we might still reap the rewards of the Hit this year. What good did the Hit do last year? I’ll tell you: It got a lot of people to come to the ballpark, and they saw the Reds play good baseball.

“People came out to see the Hit, and now they’re going to come see the Reds, see (Dave) Parker do his thing, see (Tom) Browning and (Mario) Soto.”

What’s to worry? Managing?

“This is enjoyable,” said Rose, now in his second full season as the Reds’ manager.

“I feel more at ease. I know how to handle everything now in spring training. A year ago this time, I was thinking about how to send a guy to the minors for the first time. Now I’ve been through it.”

What’s to worry? The Dodgers?

“I’m not sitting here worried about the Dodgers,” said Rose, who doesn’t sit anywhere for long. “I don’t play the Dodgers until June 8.”

If anything, Rose said, the Dodgers were worried about the Reds, especially in the last weeks of the ’85 season. Over those weeks, Cincinnati had the best record in baseball, 19-9 in September, and in a five-day period from Sept. 14-19 chopped five games off L.A.’s lead before finishing 5 1/2 games behind the division-winning Dodgers.

“I guarantee you the Dodgers were watching the scoreboard,” Rose said. “I guarantee you that Tommy Lasorda was calling the press box.

” . . . We were playing well, and the Dodgers knew it. The way we played made the Dodgers the better team.”

The better team in ‘86?

“We caught everybody by surprise last year,” Rose said. “We’re not going to catch everybody by surprise this time--not if we’re 4-1 to win it, with the Dodgers. Last year, we were 80-1.

“But I’m glad we’re 4-1. If I was the owner of a race horse and I go to the track, I’d much rather have a horse that is 4-1 than 80-1. I’d feel much better.

“And if we’ve got players believing they’re good, they’ll start playing better. We expect to win this year. We expect to contend.”

The Reds, losers of 92 games in 1984, won 19 more games in ’85 and have added two starting pitchers--John Denny, a former Cy Young Award winner, and Bill Gullickson, who won 72 games in six seasons with the Montreal Expos.

“When I played with Philadelphia, if I had to pick one pitcher I would have taken (Steve) Carlton, then I would have taken Denny,” Rose said. “In Montreal, Gullickson and (Bryn) Smith were real close.”

When Rose was with the Phillies, Denny was winning the 1983 Cy Young Award with a 19-6 record. Take away that season, and Denny is a .500 pitcher, 93-92, who has had elbow problems the last two seasons.

Gullickson may prove the more valuable addition. He was 14-12 with the Expos last season, but Montreal scored just 16 runs in his 12 losses. In his wins, Gullickson’s earned-run average was 0.85.

This spring, the Reds had a chance to add reliever Rollie Fingers to a bullpen that already had former Dodger properties Ted Power (27 saves) and John Franco (12-3, 2.18 ERA), but owner Marge Schott insisted that Fingers’ handlebar mustache had to go. Schott has room in the team’s media guide for a biography on her St. Bernard, Schottzie--Page 4, no less--but doesn’t have room on her roster for anyone with facial hair.

Fingers decided that he could do without the dog, but not without the mustache.

At first, Rose did not take kindly to the decision. “Jesus Christ had a beard and he could bat cleanup for this team,” he told Cincinnati writers.

He’s only slightly less irreverent now.

“I understand the club’s policy; I understand Fingers,” he said.

“First of all, you don’t know how close he was to coming here, or how healthy he is. Of course, anybody would be upset if you had a chance to get a guy who could help you win the division but lose him because he has a mustache.

“If Rollie Fingers had a Cincinnati uniform on and pitched like he did when he was Rollie Fingers, anyone would love to have him. If they didn’t they’d be crazy.

“In Rollie’s mind, it was like if I was traded and was told I couldn’t hustle. That’s my trademark, and the mustache is his.

“It’s not my rule. But like all of us, I have people to answer to. We have a rule, and I’m going to abide by it.”

There is a temptation to dismiss the Reds because of their advancing age. Rose shares first base with Tony Perez, who will be 44 on May 14. Bo Diaz, the catcher, is 33. Second baseman Ron Oester is 30. The shortstop, Davey Concepcion, is 38. Third baseman Buddy Bell is 35. Dave Parker, the right fielder, is 35. Pitcher Denny is 34.

Outfielder Gary Redus, unhappy about the time he spent on the bench, said last season that Rose was hurting the team by playing as much as he did. This season, Redus is in the starting lineup--in Philadelphia. He went to the Phillies in the Denny deal.

Rose has a ready answer for those who raise the age issue. He points to the ’83 Phillies, who won the National League pennant with an over-30 set that included Rose, Perez, Joe Morgan, Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton.

“That team beat the Dodgers,” he said.

And to Redus’ charge that he hurt the ballclub by writing his own name in the lineup, Rose points to the numbers: The Reds were 64-46 in games that Rose started, 25-26 in games he did not.

Rose does not pretend to false modesty when it comes to explaining the discrepancy, either.

“I was on base a lot and I’m not going to take a lot of credit, but I hit in front of the guy (Dave Parker) who led the league in RBIs and I hit higher than the guy in front of me,” he said.

“I had something to do with him knocking in all those runs.”

The Reds, Rose said, were intimidated by the Dodgers in the first half of the season, when they lost 8 of the first 11 games between the teams. Los Angeles wound up winning the season series, 11-7, and shut out Cincinnati four times.

Few of the Reds hit the Dodgers well last season. Rose hit .172, and lifetime against Los Angeles is batting .284, 20 points lower than his career average and his lowest average against any team. Concepcion hit .119, Eddie Milner .132, Oester .143.

But the experience of being in the race last September has altered the equation, according to Rose.

“I think we can contend with the Dodgers,” he said. “I think they’re good; I think we’re good.

“I mean, we can sit here and talk. I don’t think (Orel) Hershiser is going to go 19-3 this season. He may win 20, but he’s going to lose more than three games.

“Maybe the Dodgers think Browning isn’t going to win 20, but I don’t think Soto’s going to win only 12. You know Parker’s going to hit, just like you know (Pedro) Guerrero’s going to hit.

“We all have questions, but the Dodgers and us just have less questions to answer than the other teams in our division. It’s pretty simple, when you think about it.”

The Reds can put four players in their lineup who have had 2,000 or more hits, the only team in big league history able to make that claim: Rose, Bell, Concepcion, and Perez. They had five until they traded Cesar Cedeno to St. Louis last August. Parker will become the fifth when he gets his 150th hit of 1986.

Rose says there’s no way that native son Bell, who graduated from Cincinnati’s Moeller High and whose father, Gus, played the outfield for the Reds from 1953-61, will duplicate the .219 average he had in ‘85, after coming from Texas in a trade.

“He’ll probably be an All-Star this year--I hope he is,” Rose said of Bell, who long was sought by the Dodgers. “He has a lot of pride.”

He’s also high on Nick Esasky, who was a third baseman until Bell came home and Esasky switched--reluctantly at first--to the outfield. Esasky hit 13 of his 21 home runs after the switch.

“I wish I could put a number on it, but it’s ungodly what he’s capable of,” Rose said. “He’s as strong as anyone in the league.”

Rose calls Oester the best No. 8 hitter in the league. Oester, who hit .295, would have made it .300 if he hadn’t opened the season 0 for 15. And bidding to break into the lineup are three kids--outfielders Eric Davis and Kal Daniels and shortstop Kurt Stillwell--who were voted the top three prospects in the American Assn. last season.

But on this team, age will be served. Ask Rose how much he’ll be in the lineup this season, and you get the only answer you ever expect to hear from him.

“I don’t know, but I hope to play a lot,” he said. “I’m swinging the bat pretty good, pretty quick.”

Maybe Grecian Formula works on wrists, too.