After a Life in the Fast Lane, He’s Not Used to the Slow Stuff

He doesn’t run as fast as he once did and he’s a bit thicker around the waist, but most in the crowd of 350 at a slow-pitch softball game at West Hartford, Conn., Sunday recognized the new infielder, Pete Rose.

Rose, playing for the Conn Kings against the Peter Pan Cafe, went two for six including a home run, but his Kings lost, 21-7.

“I’m not used to this kind of pitching,” he said. “It’s like hitting a golf ball--it’s just sitting there waiting for you to hit it and you can’t hit it. Throw it 90 m.p.h., and I can hit it.”

Rose played first and third base and got a big cheer when, on successive plays, he threw out a runner at second and speared a line drive.

He was released from prison Jan. 7, having served five months for failing to report $354,968 in income from 1984 to 1987. After the softball game, he said the cheers of the crowd delivered a message.

“What that tells me is that people realize I made a mistake, but are willing to give me a second opportunity,” he said. “That’s all I want--a second chance. I don’t need sympathy from anybody.

“I took my medicine. I took it like a man. I didn’t complain. I’m doing good now. I’m watching myself. I watch who I associate with. I watch where I go.”

Trivia time: Who hit the first World Series home run in Yankee Stadium?

Chirp!: Humorist and New York sportswriter Arthur (Bugs) Baer, in 1923, describing Shelby, Mont., the site of the Jack Dempsey-Tom Gibbons fight: “This place is so tough the canaries sing bass.”

Who’s too old?: Some have made much of the fact that at 69, Lou Saban has been named football coach at Peru State College in Peru, Neb.

In 1933, the University of Chicago fired Amos Alonzo Stagg because he had reached 70. Stagg moved on to College of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., where he was the coach until 1946.

Stagg was an austere, teetotaling man. Bill Becker, who played for Stagg, remembered the extent of the old man’s profanity.

“If you fouled up, Stagg would call you a jackass,” Becker said. “If it was more serious, he’d call you a double jackass. And if you really screwed up, you were a triple jackass.”

Add Stagg: The old man got even with Chicago. In 1938, at 76, he took Pacific to Chicago. Pacific won, 32-0.

Becker: “On the way home on the train, the old man danced in the aisles and led the team in song.”

Stagg was a volunteer assistant coach at Pacific until he was 98. He died in 1965, at 102.

Coach Steinbrenner: Saban, on his friend of 40 years, George Steinbrenner, once his receiver coach at Northwestern:

“They can say what they will about George, but when he was a coach, he was great with young men. He was an excellent assistant coach and a great recruiter.”

Trivia answer: Casey Stengel. A 34-year-old outfielder for the New York Giants, Stengel won Game 1 of the 1923 Series with a two-out, ninth-inning, inside-the-park homer.

Quotebook: Former Yankee pitcher Whitey Ford, describing his years of rooming with Mickey Mantle: “Anyone who roomed with Mantle lost five years off his career.”