Pete Rose Jr. Still Plugging

It’s a hazy, humid Tuesday night on a cramped college campus, about 15 miles west of Manhattan. A smattering of cheers arises as Pete Rose Jr. strides toward the plate.

Rose, the New Jersey Jackals’ left fielder, joined the team just five days earlier. He arrived with plenty of baggage.

For Rose, this is his third minor league team this year, his 10th minor league season. At 28, he is older than all but a single teammate. And even when the sun disappears this night, Rose cannot escape the shadow of his dad, Pete Rose Sr., or the old man’s 4,256 hits.

Pete Jr. walks purposefully from the on-deck circle, digs his left heel deep in the batter’s box. He stares out at the left-hander on the mound. He cocks his bat behind his head.

The pitch is delivered . . . and fouled straight back.

Strike one.

This is an at-bat that Pete Rose Jr. never anticipated--not 20 years ago, when little Petey lugged bats for his record-setting dad; not 10 years ago, when the Baltimore Orioles drafted him out of high school; certainly not one year ago, when he lined his first major league hit with the Cincinnati Reds.

But here he stands in the New Jersey suburbs, unbowed by a disheartening decade of numbing nights in obscure towns, refusing to surrender his increasingly unlikely dream of a full season in The Show.

Want to compare Rose with a mythic baseball figure? Forget his famous father. Think “Crash” Davis, the long-ball hitting minor league lifer played by Kevin Costner in “Bull Durham.”

“Pete’s not going to give up,” said Jackals coach Hank Manning, an ex-ballplayer who forged a friendship with Rose as a minor league teammate. “Pete is never going to give up.”

It’s an attitude inherited from his old man, who was admittedly a better ballplayer than father.

Pete Sr. split with his son’s mother, opting for a trophy wife after an ugly 1980 divorce. Pete Jr. played in his first organized baseball game 23 years ago, but needs only his fingers to count the number of games that his dad has attended. Father and son speak infrequently--maybe a dozen times a year.

It’s unclear if Pete Sr., banned from baseball for life over a gambling scandal, even knows his son is in New Jersey. The son doesn’t want to talk about it.

Rose wants his game to do his talking, but that’s part of the problem: It will never speak as eloquently as his namesake’s did.

Still, Rose Jr. pays homage to his father’s achievements by writing the numbers 4,256 in the infield dirt before each game--the number of hits Rose Sr. racked up on his way past Ty Cobb.

“Charlie Hustle” sprinted to success; when Pete Sr. was his son’s age, he was a four-time All Star and National League rookie of the year.

Pete Jr. instead runs a marathon, a race where the finish line is constantly moving.

His minor league resume reads like a roadmap: Sarasota, Fla.; Birmingham, Ala.; Indianapolis; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Columbus, Ga.; Nashville. And now Little Falls, N.J.

He has played in nearly 1,000 minor league games, struggling to a lifetime batting average of just .245.

He has endured shouted insults about his father’s gambling--”Bet you can’t get a hit!”--and become a target for every drunken redneck with enough cash for a ticket.

In 1997, after eight years in the minors, Rose reconsidered his future. His mediocre career average was no qualification for the majors. He was married now, living with his in-laws. The odds were growing larger against him.

Predictably, there was no quit in Pete Rose Jr.

Rose awaits the second pitch from Keith Breitenstein, a tough left-hander with the Adirondack Lumberjacks. It’s in, on his fists. Rose fights it off, fouls it straight back.

Strike two.

He steps out, ignoring the hyperkinetic antics of the Jackals’ mascot, then returns to the box. His stance is nothing like his father’s crouch; Pete Jr. looks for the long ball, not the single. He stares out at Breitenstein, who delivers again.

Outside. Ball one.

His career in jeopardy, Rose reinvented himself for the 1997 season. He added 25 pounds of muscle to his 6-foot-1 frame, and became a power hitter. Rose rapped a career-high 25 homers; his batting average climbed to .308.

He was called up by the Reds in September, and lined his first major league hit as his father sat in the stands at Cinergy Field. Rose appeared in 11 games with the Reds, with two hits and two walks in 16 at-bats.

“After that, I thought there was no more ‘Pete Rose’s son,”’ said Manning, the Jackals coach. “Pete Rose Jr. put the numbers up. He sent out a message: ‘I can play.”’

But the career year was nearly the career’s end. He was released by the Reds’ Indianapolis farm team early this year. “I just didn’t get a chance,” he complained to a friend.

He resurfaced with the Nashville Sounds in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization, but was released in August. Manning quickly put in a phone call and issued an invitation.

“Give me three days,” Rose responded. After a long weekend, Rose joined the Jackals in Lynn, Mass., for an Aug. 5 game against the Massachusetts Mad Dogs.

Rose hoped to quietly finish out the season, set himself up for next year. But a Jackals press release trumpeted the addition of “the son of major league baseball’s all-time hit leader, Pete Rose.”

In the past, Pete Jr. had worn his dad’s retired No. 14. But here, in New Jersey, he’s wearing No. 29.

Why the change?

He’d rather not say. In fact, he’d rather not say anything. Rose is turning down all interview requests.

“He is tired of talking about himself, tired of talking about his dad,” explained Jackals PR man Jim Cerny. “This is his 10th year in the minors, and it’s been a tough year.”

Jackals manager Kash Beauchamp, whose father played on the Reds with Pete Sr., has helped ease things. “I know exactly what he’s going through, but on a 100 times smaller scale,” says Beauchamp, whose dad, Jim, played 10 years in the majors.

Beauchamp, too, had followed his father’s lead. He was a promising minor league prospect until tearing up his shoulder in a home-plate collision--a 1986 crash right out of the Pete Rose baseball handbook.

Now, at 35, he writes Rose’s name into the fifth spot in his batting order.

Junior--the name Rose now prefers--came in swinging. He drilled nine hits in his first 18 at bats, with seven RBIs in five games. He played first base and left field, a switch from his usual spot at third base.