When Trouble Hits, It Sometimes Hurts Friends Just to Watch

Joe Morgan still follows baseball because he’s a broadcaster and because he enjoys the game. He doesn’t enjoy what’s happened to the Cincinnati Reds.

The Reds were the only National League West team that did not win a division title in the 1980s, finishing second four straight seasons before plummeting to fifth place during an injury- and scandal-plagued 1989.

“I think the Reds are going to have to make a lot of changes to be successful,” Morgan said. “Any time you have talent like they’ve had and it doesn’t win, pretty soon players start thinking about themselves instead of winning and what’s important.”

The former second baseman--and recent addition to Baseball’s Hall of Fame--earned a reputation as a winner after being traded from Houston to Cincinnati in 1971. Morgan played on four World Series teams, in Cincinnati and Philadelphia, each time with Pete Rose.

In the lobby of Joe Morgan Beverage Co., his Coors distributorship in Hayward, Calif., is a picture of Morgan with Rose displayed with other Morgan baseball memorabilia. Morgan said he and Rose used to eat together before games, travel to the stadium together and often eat together afterward.

When Rose became implicated in the gambling investigation, Morgan called to see what he could do to help.

“I said, ‘Hey, I’m here if you need me. I’ll come down or I’ll do whatever you want me to do to support you. I’m not going to get involved in all the stuff going on, but if you need to talk or you want me around, I’ll come down.’ ”

Morgan called Rose again about two days before Rose was banished from baseball by then-Commissioner Bart Giamatti.

“I just called to reinforce the fact that if he needed me, I was there,” Morgan said. “He said he was going to beat this thing and he wasn’t guilty.”

It was difficult for Morgan to watch all of this happen to Rose.

“It’s tough to see anyone you care about have problems. It always bothers me because I end up having to defend him--not about what he did, but the type of person he is. Pete’s a good person. I can’t defend what he did. I don’t even try. But I can defend the fact that a lot of people think Pete was a bad guy all the time. And he wasn’t.”

Morgan thinks baseball was justified in banning Rose because “baseball is predicated on the public trust.” But as a friend, Morgan would wonder if there was something more he could have done for Rose.

“I never saw anything like this coming,” Morgan said. “I knew he liked to go to the dog track in spring training. And a couple of times in Chicago, he went out to the track and had dinner. But there was no inkling in me that his gambling was that serious, until it all started coming out in the paper.

“And I knew for a fact that they wouldn’t pick on Pete Rose. Baseball would not take one of its heroes and pick on him, so I knew there had to be something that brought them to that point.”