Pete Rose Jr. Takes Optimistic Viewpoint : Baseball: After his father’s suspension, he expects hecklers. zbut ‘he’ll get to see me play more,’ the younger Rose said of his dad.

Pete Rose Jr., ever the optimist, says there’s a bright side to the lifetime suspension given his famous father.

“He’ll get to see me play more,” said the 20-year-old Rose, who plays in the Baltimore Orioles’ minor-league system. “I hope he gets to see me play every game. I want to show him my appreciation for him.

“I want to say, ‘Hey, Dad, look what you did, you made me into a great ballplayer.’ He knows I’m a good player, but I’d like to open his eyes more than I already have.”

The younger Rose expects to hear hecklers this season, along with more questions about his father’s August, 1989, ban from baseball on gambling allegations. Rose Jr. said he also anticipates remarks from people who say his name, not his skills, got him to pro ball.

“I’m always going to hear it,” he said. “Guaranteed.”

But Rose, who reports March 12 to Miami for his second season as a minor leaguer, isn’t worried.

“I’m ready to go,” Rose said. “I’m a little bit bored. I’m ready to go down to spring training and get started, then get the season under way.”

The younger Rose began his pro career just as the investigation of his father’s gambling came to a head last year. He struggled in his rookie season with Frederick, Md., a Class A team. By mid-May, he was hitting .133 and had lost his spot in the lineup.

“We asked an awful lot of him to put him in Carolina league,” Baltimore Player Personnel Director Doug Melvin said. “That was an error in judgment on our part.”

“Ninety percent of the kids out of high school are going to struggle,” said Roy Krasik, assistant player development director. “It’s a big adjustment, with travel and being away from home.”

Rose reduced the problem to baseball terms: “I had one problem, getting my hands started. And I wasn’t playing every day. That was a bigger problem than my swing.”

After extended spring training and reassignment in June to Erie in the New York-Penn league, he hit .276 in 58 games and led the team with 15 doubles, five triples and 26 RBI. His father played his first pro season in the same league 29 years earlier, hitting .277 for Geneva.

Baseball America, a guide to minor-league baseball, picked the younger Rose as the eighth-best prospect in the N.Y.-Penn league.

“He kept improving,” Krasik said. “He’s aggressive and he comes to the ballpark ready to play every day.”

Krasik said Rose Jr. is a hard worker who could make it in the major leagues.

“Anyone who works that hard has the potential to make it,” Krasik said.