Pete Rose Dedication to Game of Baseball Was Nearly Beautiful

When Wade Boggs, celebrated batsman for the Boston Red Sox, experienced his greatest embarrassment last year, he got a visit from his longtime hero, Pete Rose.

Boggs had been the subject of a series written in Penthouse magazine by a woman, revealing intimate details of her relationship with Wade.

Wade wasn’t eager for such details to be revealed, considering that he had a wife and children.

Devastated, he now sat with Rose.

“I told him, “ Pete disclosed, “that the best way to handle the problem is to keep hitting .350. If you do that, the story will be forgotten faster than if you hit .250. There is something about .350 that makes the world forget everything else.”

Rose never hit .350, but this offers an insight on the outlook on life he embraced. He saw earthly problems vanish on the wind of base hits, times at bat, years of service.

It was the childlike orbit in which he moved, impervious to marital crises, divorce, paternity suits and a gambling habit that would later bury him.

Walking into Shea Stadium one night, Pete was nailed by a process server.

“I learned my wife was divorcing me,” he recounted. “I was so shaken I got only three hits that night. In my next 26 at bats, I got 17 hits. I got 52 for the month, most of my career.”

This was Pete Rose up until the time that life at last got serious. He was removed from baseball for betting and, the other day, got five months in prison for failing to pay income tax.

Watching Pete in court, you got the feeling something else counted to him besides baseball records, although he still seemed to ask, as he has for a year, whether a flicker of hope remained for a shot at the Hall of Fame.

That thought will occur to him daily at the slammer at Marion, Ill., where he will do his time. It will occur to him daily when he gets out, as it occurred to him daily since his arrival in baseball in 1963.

It doesn’t seem possible that one could be consumed by anything as Pete has been by baseball, but it was doubtless this abnormality that drove him to achievements unmatched in the sport.

He stunned you with figures, called up at will from his cerebral computer. Managing at Cincinnati three years ago, for instance, he dipped into the past.

“I came to bat a record 14,053 times,” he recalled, “But most people forget my 1,566 walks, which don’t show in the at-bats. I also figure I was hit by at least 100 pitches. That doesn’t show in the at-bats, either. And what about sacrifices? I wasn’t asked to sacrifice often, but we’re talking at least 100, which don’t show in the at bats.”

Named Player of the Decade for the 1970s, Pete was distressed when Henry Aaron lodged a complaint, contending that the vote should have gone to him.

“I don’t have to apologize to Henry,” said Rose. “When was the last time a 38-year-old played 163 games, as I did last season? (The 163rd was a makeup of a suspended game.) And when was the last time a 38-year-old got 51 hits in September and batted .421 for the month? I walked 95 times last year. I still got 208 hits, the 10th time I got 200 or more. I also stole 20 bases, including home.”

It always has been, and remains, Pete’s contention that players today miss too many games.

“It’s a state of mind,” he told us. “Everyone gets aches and pains and everyone gets mentally fatigued. But some are more willing to play than others.”

“What’s the solution?” he was asked.

“If I owned a club, I would hang up a sign in the locker room that read, ‘Note to regulars: If you play tonight, you get paid. If you don’t play, no pay.’ You would see how few games guys would miss.”

Managing the Reds, Pete admitted candidly that the thought processes of young players baffled him.

“I have a guy who arrived at 8:10 for a 7:30 game,” he said. “I fined him a game’s pay--$1,780. He offered no beef. He wrote a check calmly. I tore it up.

“I told him: “ I don’t want your lousy money. I’m just trying to figure out how a guy can arrive at 8:10 for a 7:30 game. I played 24 years without missing a single batting practice. The closest I ever came to missing was when I arrived one time at 4:45 for batting practice that began at 5.”

These are the things on which one reflects who has known Pete a long, long time. His dedication, as deranged as it seemed, was almost a thing of beauty.

You aren’t going to whitewash one who cheats the government out of taxes. Nor are you going to excuse it because others cheat the government out of taxes.

What you are trying to do is weigh--specifically, his sins, as they pertain to baseball, against his virtues, pertaining to fanatical work and to achievement.

When Hall of Fame is mentioned, few entering the argument are on the fence. There is the hanging faction, and there is the faction able to forgive.

Historians also enter the discussion, identifying rogues admitted to the Hall, including drunks, assault-and-battery guys and bum pay artists.

A lot of sermonizing is heard from the anti-Rose element, but never having played the cornet in a missionary band and taking into consideration the unique nature of the case, we are able to tender a vote for Pete.