IS IT TIME FOR PETE ROSE TO THROW IN THE TOWEL? : Do You Replace a Legend When He’s Hitting .187?

Has time suddenly played a mean trick on the 45-year-old player-manager of the Cincinnati Reds? Will Pete Rose soon be forced to retire?

The possibility is as alien to Rose as the .187 batting average that he brings to Los Angeles for tonight’s opener of a three-game series with the Dodgers.

His once promising Reds, whose struggle seems a reflection of his own, are six games under .500 and 6 1/2 back of the Houston Astros, who lead the National League West.

“We could have been buried,” Rose said, convinced that neither he nor his team are ready for the grave.

Would you expect less? Would you expect Charlie Hustle to go gentle into that good night?

Isn’t Ray Fosse still crouched there, waiting to be bowled over? Don’t we see his very identity in our own highlight film of the mind? Won’t it be just nine months on Wednesday since he passed Ty Cobb and became baseball’s all-time hit leader?

Retire? Take away the batting glove that is lodged in the first baseman’s glove that rests on his lap as he sits in his clubhouse office, the perpetual Little Leaguer? Forget it. Can’t think about it and won’t. Not now, anyway. Not in June. Not on the basis of 91 at-bats.

“I think a player of Pete’s capability and success knows when he’s through,” Cincinnati right fielder Dave Parker says. “There’s too much pride and competitiveness there to keep going out there when you can’t produce.

“The man’s a legend. He’s got my respect. I say quit when he wants to quit. To hell with the critics.”

The critics, for the most part, have not been hammering at this. It is as if they don’t have to. It is as if the .187 blinking on the scoreboard when Rose bats and the ground balls to second base are an essay in themselves.

The writers who cover the Reds regularly report it only as it is. You don’t jump to conclusions with a legend. Others have and been proven wrong. Rose remembers.

He reels off a litany of how they said he was through when he left Cincinnati in 1979 and he then went to Philadelphia and finished second in the batting race twice in the next five years; of how they said the Phillies, with five players 35 or older, were too old to win but won in 1980 and ‘83; of how the Reds won consecutive World Series in ’75 and ’76 when it was said they couldn’t win with a third baseman who didn’t hit home runs, and of how the Phillies won those two pennants when it was being said they couldn’t win with a first baseman who didn’t hit home runs.

“It seems like they’re always trying to put it on me and I get tired of it,” Rose said. “I mean, to say I shouldn’t be playing because of my age is like saying Jack Nicklaus shouldn’t be playing golf and Willie Shoemaker shouldn’t be riding horses. I can remember a time in Cincinnati when people said we were too young. Make up your mind.”

Hasn’t he always defended his honor, his sensitivities? Now, however, there seems to be a windmill everywhere he turns.

The Cincinnati Enquirer, for instance, conducted a May 15 call-in survey. Rose had ended a season-opening stint on the disabled list only 22 days earlier, but the paper wanted to know if he should retire. The vote: 169-124, in favor of retirement.

Rose can smile at that.

“The way we were going and the way I was hitting I’m surprised it was that close,” he said. “I had that many enemies in Cincinnati just because of my divorce.”

He paused, then continued, as he always does, still the best of interviews, the most accessible of the game’s major celebrities, perhaps.

“I was something like 5 for 41 then,” he said, knowing exactly what he was. “It’s easy to look at someone under those conditions and say they should retire. I’m not going to retire on the basis of a couple hundred phone calls in a country where I’ve played before millions.”

Now he is 17 for 91. He has hit in 12 of his last 14 games, but collected only one hit in each. He has just two multi-hit games and four extra-base hits--three doubles and a triple. He has 15 walks but is striking out an average of once every 6.07 at-bats contrasted to once every 11.57 last year and once every 16.5 in 1981, when he had 431 at-bats and a .325 average for the Phillies.

Now, consistent with the policy he established last year, Rose plays only against right-handed pitchers whereas his good friend, Tony Perez, plays against left-handers. Perez, 44, is hitting .135.

The critics contend that a team carrying only 24 players can’t afford an 89-year-old first base platoon hitting a combined .121. They would have Perez released and Rose retired.

Has there been pressure on the player-manager to become only a manager? Apparently not. In an organization beset by internal problems, with seven front office professionals having quit or been fired since the start of the 1985 season and the limited partners now attempting to oust owner Marge Schott, it appears that Rose will be left to make his own decision.

The company line is that Rose, the player, still provides the Reds with something more than the benefit of his own production.

“He’s an inspiration to the kids when he’s on the field,” General Manager Bill Bergesch said.

Said second baseman Ron Oester, who is more veteran than kid:

“Pete doesn’t have the power he used to and may not hit for the average he once did, but he can still make contact and move runners around, still hit the ball in the hole when he has to.

“We seem to be a different team when he’s out there. He motivates us, keeps us in the game. He’s right there to communicate with the pitchers.”

Can any player afford to speak otherwise about his manager?

A club official, requesting anonymity, said of Rose:

“He hasn’t looked so bad that you would say, ‘he’s through but just won’t admit it.’ Neither has he looked so good that you feel foolish to even ask about retirement. He’s stayed somewhere in between.”

One hundred eighty-seven is closer to nowhere than in between. Is Rose, despite all his accomplishments, embarrassed when he goes to the plate and sees his average on the board?

“No,” he said. “What do I have? Seventy, eighty at-bats. If I get three or four hits it goes up 10 points.

“I mean, it would be different if I had 200 at-bats, but I’ve had other years when I’ve started slowly. I’m still seeing the ball. I still have good hand-eye coordination. I haven’t seen any indication why I shouldn’t be able to do the things I’ve been doing the last few years.

“Of course, I went into the last few years knowing I wouldn’t play every day, wouldn’t get 200 hits. That’s why I’m batting second. I can move the ball around, do the little things. I don’t mind taking walks anymore. I needed only one more at-bat to lead the league in on-base percentage last year. I’ll take all the walks they want to give me with Dave Parker hitting next.”

Rose became a No. 2 hitter with the Phillies and admits that he lost a degree of aggressiveness then. He admits that he may no longer generate the high averages he once did because he keeps telling himself that he shouldn’t expect to.

The mind plays tricks, particularly at 45 when you also have to keep asking your coaching staff if they’ve seen any deterioration in your physical skills.

Reassured, he believes that the hot streak will surface, then cites two reasons why it has been so slow to come.

The first: At an age when preparation has taken on new significance, he missed almost all of spring training, sidelined initially by a hernia, then a virus that caused him to lose 12 pounds. Rose had never been on the disabled list before opening the 1986 season on it. He came off April 23, went 0 for 3 against Nolan Ryan, then 0 for April, another career first.

The second: Having now concluded his pursuit of Cobb, with no media hordes to keep his mind on other things, Rose has had to live with his team’s problems, as well as his own.

“I have the sneaky feeling that when the team starts playing well, I’ll start to hit better because there’ll be less on my mind,” he said. “I mean, it’s been harder this year because there’s been more to it than just putting the lineup down.

“I’ve had to put guys on the disabled list and send them out, but the toughest part is the losing. A player can deal with it much easier than a manager. I replay every decision on the bus back to the hotel. It’s like a restaurant owner who wants people to leave with a good taste. I want people to say that Pete Rose has a good team.”

They said that last year when the Reds were an unexpected contender in the West, finishing second while displaying some of the manager’s attributes. The Reds won more September games (19) than any other team and led the league in one-run and extra-inning wins.

If not a unanimous choice to win in ‘86, they became almost that after the Dodgers lost Pedro Guerrero in the last week of spring training. Did the ballyhoo hurt his players?

“I don’t think that bothered them at all,” he said. “I think they liked the idea of being a good team. It’s like going to the California Derby with a horse that’s 3 to 1 or one that’s 80 to 1. Which are you going to be more comfortable with?”

The horse only has to run. The Reds can do that. They’ve had trouble hitting and pitching.

The Reds’ .229 team batting average, entering Sunday’s doubleheader in San Francisco, was the league’s lowest. A 4.02 earned-run average was 10th among 12 teams.

Nine regulars, including Rose, Perez and the two shortstops, Dave Concepcion and Kurt Stilwell, were hitting .246 or less.

No starting pitcher had a winning record. Ted Power, who saved 27 games last year, has none this year.

The Reds lost nine straight games in late April and 11 in a row at home. They have lost 11 of 13 games with the division-leading Houston Astros and New York Mets. They are 7-16 at home. The manager said he has tried everything and might have even tried picking names out of a hat except that “the way our luck was I’d have come up with Dave Parker hitting ninth.”

Rose said he is not discouraged, only thankful that East is East and that the Dodgers, with a historical emphasis on good pitching, haven’t been in first place, threatening a runaway.

“I don’t mean disrespect to Houston or San Francisco but I think there’s a good chance the leaders in this division will come back to us,” he said. “I don’t consider it unrealistic to think we can still pass five or six teams. A six- or seven-game win streak within the division and there you are. Maybe we’re now starting to play like people thought we would. I have to think that not all of you guys (in the media) were wrong (in picking the Reds).”

And Rose? Are some people wrong about Rose? He smiled, thrust a fist into his glove and said it’s all part of the job.

“If you’re a veteran player, no matter how good you’ve been, people are going to wait and say, ‘See, I told you he was through,’ ” Rose said. “A guy who’s 25 gets off like I did without spring training and it’s a slow start. With me, I’m finished.

“But that’s all right. You learn to accept it. It makes it interesting. I just don’t think I should ever sit here or at home or on a plane and think about retiring. The only thing I should ever be thinking about is how I can help us win today’s game. You think negatively, that’s the way it’s going to go. I mean, I don’t worry about getting honored at home plate because I’ll still be putting the uniform on as a manager.

“The game owes me nothing.”

Of course not, but today’s game may not really be the only thing on his mind.

“I’d like to be hitting .375,” he said. “But I know that a month from now I won’t still be hitting .175--or I won’t still be playing. I won’t quit. I’ll just shoot myself.”