Cincinnati Sticks By Its Tarnished Hometown Hero

Outside Jim & Jack’s Riverside tavern--just down the hill from Pete Rose Field, the sandlot where many a dream-filled West Side kid has stretched a single to a double and then belly-flopped into third on a steal--hangs a banner that says what’s on so many minds here this summer:

“Home of Pete Rose and Proud of It.”

“We had the sign made when all this started and it’s going to stick there no matter what happens,” said Jack Houston, the Jack in Jim & Jack’s. “He’s from this neighborhood. He was brought up around here. People are concerned, but they’re sticking by Pete.”

To Cincinnati, especially the gritty, blue-collar West Side where he grew up, it’s always been Pete. Not Rose or Pete Rose or Peter Edward Rose or even Charlie Hustle, the nickname he earned while gutting his way into the baseball record books with aggressive play and the most hits in major league history.

There have been other stars and other heroes here, but none quite so hard-driving, so dedicated to his craft, so down-to-earth, old-fashioned-working-class-Cincinnati as Rose. For more than a quarter of a century, ever since he broke in with the hometown Reds and won rookie of the year honors back in 1963, this snug and chummy Ohio River metropolis has had a love affair with Rose. It has winked at his personal foibles, which have been considerable, and venerated his athletic feats, which have been nothing short of stupendous.

But never has that loyalty been tested as it has in recent months. For Rose, now 48 years old and the Reds’ manager, stands accused of committing the cardinal sins of the game that to many he epitomizes--betting on baseball and, even worse, betting on his own team. Under baseball’s rules, he could be banned from the game for life if found guilty by Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti.

Like a Bean Ball

The allegations have smacked into this baseball-mad community with the force of a bean ball, and the turning point in the drama could come today when a local judge is scheduled to rule on a motion in a lawsuit filed by Rose, who denies charges that he placed baseball bets with bookies. Rose, claiming that Giamatti has a vendetta against him, wants the court to, in effect, take over the investigation.

But lawyers for Giamatti, a one-time president of Yale University, say there is considerable evidence against Rose and insist such a ruling would undermine the commissioner’s longstanding authority to discipline players and coaches for misconduct. Those powers stem directly from the infamous 1919 Black Sox scandal in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox were banished from baseball after taking bribes from gamblers to throw the World Series to, ironically, the Reds.

The Rose scandal, like so much about Rose over the years, is the No. 1 topic of conversation in Cincinnati these days. The affair has dominated the front pages of both local newspapers. Several television and radio stations air the courtroom proceedings live and, even during regular programming, break in with frequent bulletin updates on the case.

To outsiders, such saturation coverage might seem overkill. But Rose is not just a sports legend here. To many, he has become the community’s most sacred institution, a role model for athletes and a shining example of how determination can transform someone with only modest physical attributes into a superstar.

“Pete Rose and Cincinnati, he’s like a king, he’s an idol, a hero,” said Fritz Wheeler, a 32-year-old truck driver who grew up in the same Riverdale neighborhood as Rose. “ . . . When you were a kid you tried to play the game like Pete Rose. Everybody tried to hustle like Pete Rose.”

Field Renamed

A ball field in Bold Face Park, where Rose as a child played Knot Hole ball, the local version of Little League, has been renamed for him. When Rose bolted to Philadelphia in 1979 after the Reds failed to offer him a serious contract, fans mounted citywide petition drives to get him back and flooded the stands with Rose jerseys and T-shirts whenever the Phillies were in town. Four years ago, after he returned to the Reds and knocked in his record-setting 4,192nd hit, a jubilant City Council scrapped its longstanding rule that roads and monuments could only be named after dead people and turned 2nd Street into Pete Rose Way.

“He’s ours and we love him,” Mayor Charles Luken proclaimed at the time.

That Rose could attain such civic stature says much about the importance of baseball to the image of Cincinnati, one of the smallest (pop: 370,000) and least cosmopolitan of major league cities. Cooperstown, N.Y., may claim to be the birthplace of the national pastime, but it is Cincinnati where the Reds became the nation’s first professional team back in 1869.

From the beginning, it was a game centered on the working-class West Side, a rough-hewn, shot-and-a-beer kind of place where generations of stern Germanic parents taught their children to work hard and play hard. Many of the early Reds were reared on the West Side and, until the modern Riverfront Stadium opened downtown in 1970, most of the ballparks that the Reds played in over the years were located there.

Even today, the West Side remains a baseball powerhouse. Three of the 26 current major league managers hail from the neighborhood--Rose, Don Zimmer of the Chicago Cubs and Russ Nixon of the Atlanta Braves.

Norris Johnson, a sports sociologist at the University of Cincinnati, said the Rose mystique was magnified by his ties to the community and his intense style of play. Rose seemed a throwback to an earlier era, always racing to first on a walk and never hesitating to get his uniform dirty.

“He was a hard worker, he pitched in, he personified bedrock, solid Midwestern America,” Johnson said.

Personal Life

At least professionally he did. His personal life, always under the public microscope, was less than exemplary. He hung out at the race track and associated with gamblers. He was a well-known womanizer who cheated on his first wife and settled a paternity suit out of court.

Even in that, however, many here found fragments to admire. “Rose has a lot of rough edges,” said Kevin Grace, a baseball archivist and book review editor for Spitball, a baseball literary quarterly based here. “He never makes any excuses for himself. He’s not the brightest guy in the world. He doesn’t have a life outside of baseball. He’s just a guy of the streets who likes his gambling, his races, his fun.”

Many fans here think Rose should be given the benefit of the doubt simply because he is so devoted to the game. “I can’t believe Pete Rose is that stupid to bet on baseball, because that’s his whole life,” said Rick Adams, 29, a department store clerk on his way to see the Reds play the Dodgers Friday night. “He didn’t like school, he didn’t go to college. Baseball, that’s all he is, strictly baseball.”

Dan Langmeyer, a local social psychologist who studies hero worship, said the controversy has done little to diminish Rose’s stature. “This is a very Germanic, conservative city,” said Langmeyer. “That sort of work ethic that Rose personifies is highly regarded. That was part of why he was a hero. And we don’t like to think ill of our heroes. We didn’t do it with J.F.K., we can’t do it with Pete Rose.”

Indeed, many Rose supporters portray the controversy as a kind of class struggle between the good-natured, homespun people of the heartland and snobby, elitist sophisticates personified by the erudite Giamatti.

“It’s almost like a commando raid,” complained attorney Jim Crowley. “This New York outsider is trying to take away our civic treasure.”

Not everyone, of course, is willing to be so forgiving. Fritz Schatzel of Sharonville said he is embarrassed and his two young sons, both active in baseball, are angry. “He was their main man, Charlie Hustle, never give up,” Schatzel said. “They idolized him. And now they ask me: ‘Dad, what’s this deal with Pete Rose?’ My oldest boy said he’s a jerk to ruin his whole career on gambling and I say it too.”

But for every Fritz Schatzel there are many more Nell Bauers or Paul Stiths. “I’m very upset about this,” said Bauer, who runs a bowling alley in nearby Franklin. “I’m a little bit worried about our Pete but I still believe in him and I say if you want to bet on your team bet on your team just so you don’t bet against them.”

Said Stith, a regular down at Jim & Jack’s: “He always gave 150% and I’ll still back him. I don’t believe any of it. Rose is baseball. He’s nothing but baseball. I can’t believe this is happening to him. I’ll never go to another ball game if they kick him out and there’ll be a lot of other people who won’t go neither.”

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