This Rose Definitely Hasn’t Wilted

It was a day that dawned for Pete Rose on nothing more important than a $20-million lawsuit.

Pete thought the guy who served him was waiting for an autograph. Pete always was an optimist.

It was no way to treat a legend. The guy who was suing him over a business deal gone sour, ex-teammate Pete Whisenant, is a mere 4,035 hits behind Pete in their careers. Pete Rose has more hits over 4,000--296--than Pete Whisenant has total, 221.

But that was nothing. Before the day was over, Pete would be humiliated again by a guy who never got even one hit in the big leagues, an American League umpire named John Hirschbeck.

Life as a manager is not all ticker-tape parades and bubble-gum cards, Pete Rose is finding out. Rose will be in the Hall of Fame as surely as there is one, if he ever stops playing long enough to fulfill the five-year hiatus requirement. But, in a dugout, he’s just another skipper. He might have made the world forget Ty Cobb. Can he make it forget Casey Stengel?

The likelihood is high. But this was not Pete’s day. Heavy rains had hit Florida, and Pete’s team, the Reds, had delayed their trip down the coast from Tampa to Port Charlotte for two hours, and when they finally bused down, they were in their game uniforms with no change of clothing.

This turned out to be a miscalculation on Pete’s part because he wasn’t to be in much of the game. Pete got, as the late Dizzy Dean once put it, “dejected from the game” before his side got a man out in the first inning.

Well, in the view of Pete, that’s not quite accurate. The way Pete saw it, his team had gotten two guys out.

The first two batters for the home team, Texas Rangers Oddibe McDowell and Scott Fletcher, reached first base on hits and stole second. At least, that’s the way Hirschbeck called it.

Pete gave the ump the benefit of the doubt on the first call, but when he called Fletcher safe and Pete’s second baseman, Ron Oester, exploded, Pete hustled out to see if the umpire might be inclined to take into account Pete’s version of the matter, which differed drastically from the official one.

Pete felt, not unreasonably, that a guy with 4,296 lifetime hits might have more visual acuity than one with none and the fact that the ump was 5 feet away and Pete 125 only evened the odds a little bit, not conclusively.

Pete began the general questioning on a high note. “You missed two calls, now you want to throw my second baseman out,” he opened the dialogue. It seemed to Pete a fair summation of the state of affairs.

Umpire Hirschbeck looked at him as if Rose were something he saw crawling out of his lunch pie. “You’re history!” he roared.

Well, of course, Pete Rose is history. As no one is more aware than Pete. “Don’t talk to me about history!” Pete roared. “You’re nothin’!”

Pete spent the rest of that spring training afternoon in the dressing room at the sparkling new Ranger complex in West Florida, surrounded by coffee urns, Danish rolls and discontent.

On the field, his team was winning. In the locker room, the greatest hitter, certifiably, in all the ages of baseball--by the numbers if not the decimals--was taking exile with bad grace. Pete Rose does not suffer inaction gladly.

The books have made his team a favorite for the National League West, but the joke around the league is, the Reds are 5-1 if Rose plays--and 3-1 if he doesn’t.

Pete is not amused. “Listen!” he says. “Do you know I set 13 records in one game last year? Thirteen!”

Pressed, Pete will enumerate them. First of all, he got five hits in the game. Every time Pete gets a hit, he resets the record for most hits in a career. “So, that’s five,” he says.

Next, every at-bat Pete takes sets a record. “So, that’s 10.”

Next, every game sets a record--11.

“Then, I hit a double and every double I get is a league record. Then, I set a new record for most times going 5 for 5.”

Pete Rose is the encyclopedia on Pete Rose. A lot of ballplayers shrug off their accomplishments. “I don’t pay attention to numbers,” they tell you.

Pete Rose pays attention to numbers. Pete can tell you every pop foul he ever lifted, who was pitching, how many were out and what the inning was.

But will he bat this year or become an armchair manager? Pete looks resentful.

“Did you know I led the team in pinch-hitting home a run from second base last year?” he says. “If we got a pinch-hitter better than me, I’m the happiest guy in the dugout. But last year, we didn’t.”

Clearly, Pete is not so sure this year will be any different. He’ll turn 46 in a week but he believes that Pete Rose has a few line doubles left.

A guy who sets a record every time he gets a bat on a ball--and sometimes when he doesn’t--should not be restricted to arguing with rookie umpires.

Why, Pete can set another record just by suiting up to play. And Pete is not one to leave any records lying around.

They say you can never be too rich or too thin. Well, Pete thinks you can never have too many records. He wants to have so many, they’ll think there were three of him.