Charlie Hustle has Hustled for the Last Time.

September 30, 2024 6:07 PM

Pete Rose Dead at 83 Leaving behind a very complicated history full of on the field accomplishments and a disastrous personal life - including allegations of statutory rape, tax evasion and the betting scandal that led to his permanent ineligibility.
posted by drewbage1847 (34 comments total)

Also today, Dikembe Motumbo. Even as a Sonics fan, one loss hits harder than the other. One seemeded like a good human, and not just a sports star.

While he was a great player, he gambled on his team. No forgiveness.
posted by Windopaene at 6:20 PM on September 30 [11 favorites]

An MLB representative, commenting from the MGM Bet Makers podium in the DraftKings studio, offered their condolences, but reminded fans that Rose was banned for gambling, which is completely unacceptable to the league. They also plugged a first $100 in bets free promo from FanDuel.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:32 PM on September 30 [92 favorites]

Plus he always had such a...sour expression, like his soul was curdled.

I remember when Dikembe burst on the scene, and he looked wonderfully different: all knees and elbows and impossibly long legs. I was a young kid and also the smallest in my family, though, so maybe some of that was my issues.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:33 PM on September 30 [7 favorites]

Rose was slated to pass on in 2016 but he bet the Grim Reaper eight years that the Cubs would beat Cleveland in the World Series.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:42 PM on September 30 [11 favorites]

He served his lifetime ban. Let him in the HoF now. Same with Shoeless Joe.
posted by S'Tella Fabula at 7:03 PM on September 30 [25 favorites]

.

I never understood why the ban was maintained for so long and who he must have pissed off to earn it.

Great title.
posted by Sphinx at 7:05 PM on September 30 [1 favorite]

I think the real reason he was kept banned was the way he trickle truthed his gambling activities. "I never placed bets", "I bet on other sports", "Ok, fine I bet on baseball games, but never on my teams", "Ok, yes I bet on games with my team, but only to win", "fine, to lose too"
posted by drewbage1847 at 7:15 PM on September 30 [11 favorites]

I don’t believe he ever actually admitted to betting against his team. The rest, yes.
posted by atoxyl at 7:28 PM on September 30 [4 favorites]

That's right - what he changed was "I only ever bet when I was a manager, not as a player" and then it came out that he did bet as a player as well - but no documented proof that he bet on them to lose.
posted by drewbage1847 at 7:58 PM on September 30 [4 favorites]

I watched the fantastic 4-part HBO ("Max") Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose series recently and they make it pretty clear he fumbled pretty much every single step of the way since his lifetime ban, in an attempt to get in that Hall Of Fame. drewbage above summarized it pretty well (though, like atoxyl says, he maintains he never bet against the team). They show footage going back to when the whole thing blew up and he changed his story several times, and every single time said "there. I've admitted my faults. I told the whole truth".

(fast forward 10 years, showing footage of how bad it really was)

"Okay, NOW I'm ready to tell the full story ...."

(fast forward 10 years, showing more footage of more bad shit he still didn't admit)

"Okay, okay, here's what ALSO happened ..."

Rinse, repeat. You can see that when all the other parts about the story turned out to be true, despite his denials of each piece over the last 40 years, the MLB might not consider his word as final.

There's also a through-line about his storytelling and his own lore where, yeah, he did some pretty incredible things and a lot of it can be verified, but so many of his other stories, interviews, excuses, explanations, just don't add up or are outright provably false. Then you throw in his constant other fumbles - ex : a young woman journalist asks him about some past indiscretions regarding underage girls and he says "that was 55 years ago, babe!" - and somehow he thought "yeah, I've still got a fighting chance!".

I wouldn't be surprised if they give him posthumous inclusion at some point, but I agree Shoeless Joe should be in there first.
posted by revmitcz at 8:04 PM on September 30 [10 favorites]

One aspect of Rose’s career and its aftermath that doesn’t get talked about much is the fact that – as this New Yorker article from a couple months back points out – he was in many ways Cincinnati’s proverbial Great White Hope, which earned him a degree of sympathy and forgiveness for his transgressions denied to other, darker players.
posted by non canadian guy at 8:48 PM on September 30 [1 favorite]

The actual reason he was “banned” was that he volunteered to quietly leave baseball forever if the powers that be dropped their investigations into his interactions with women, not of which who were of legal age.

That of that before making the same tired “brought to you by DraftKings” type joke that everyone always makes.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 8:57 PM on September 30 [7 favorites]

.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:15 PM on September 30

I never liked him because he competed at least as hard against his own teammates as he did against the opposing team.

He made everyone around him worse on purpose so he could shine the brighter.
posted by jamjam at 10:06 PM on September 30 [2 favorites]

so many of his other stories, interviews, excuses, explanations, just don't add up or are outright provably false.

Forget it Jake, it's baseball.

(Charlie Hustle was a great nickname for Rose; lots and lots of frenetic energy, generally misdirected.)
posted by chavenet at 11:58 PM on September 30 [1 favorite]

Pete Rose dismisses statutory rape questions at Phillies bash

"It was 55 years ago, babe," Rose told a female baseball writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

posted by Nelson at 12:03 AM on October 1

A good way to pay him respect would be to pass a "Pete Rose Youth Safety and Sports Integrity Act" creating a national ban on sports gambling.
posted by straight at 1:09 AM on October 1 [9 favorites]

Even if he never bet against his own team, the days he didn’t bet for them was a way of saying he didn’t think they had as good a chance to win which would give the bookies information to set the odds in a favorable way for them.
posted by jvbthegolfer at 3:50 AM on October 1 [6 favorites]

One aspect of Rose’s career and its aftermath that doesn’t get talked about much is the fact that – as this New Yorker article from a couple months back points out – he was in many ways Cincinnati’s proverbial Great White Hope, which earned him a degree of sympathy and forgiveness for his transgressions denied to other, darker players.

Yeah, I grew up going to Reds games at Riverfront Park. I suppose I might even have seen Pete Rose play, though I was fairly young and don't have any specific memories around that. But anyway, Marge Schott (the team's owner of many decades) was notorious for two things: being drunk and being racist. Probably Pete knew all about that and who knows, may have been just fine with it. But let's be clear, nobody else spoke out against it, either.

Dear reader, it was not a more innocent time.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 4:12 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]

He served his lifetime ban. Let him in the HoF now. Same with Shoeless Joe.
posted by S'Tella Fabula

It wasn't a "lifetime" ban: it was a permanent ban.
posted by The Notorious SRD at 5:42 AM on October 1 [5 favorites]

The actual reason he was “banned” was that he volunteered to quietly leave baseball forever if the powers that be dropped their investigations into his interactions with women, not of which who were of legal age.

That of that before making the same tired “brought to you by DraftKings” type joke that everyone always makes.

The point of the DraftKings joke isn't that Rose did nothing wrong. He deserved his ban, based on his gambling. He might have deserved prison for the other as well, but the gambling=ban part on its own is 100% justified.

The point is that MLB, which was once above this garbage, is absolutely diseased with gambling these days.

It's not a complex joke, but if it helps to have it explained, I can do that, explicitly.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:20 AM on October 1 [8 favorites]

...creating a national ban on sports gambling.

The Supreme Court, in its magnanimous wisdom, has declared that national sports gambling bans are unconstitutional.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:50 AM on October 1

Sports gambling is absolutely corruptible on the field by the way odds are made. The players can be relied on to want to win, but maybe the ball is fumbled to cover the spread or keep the total score down (a separate bet), reversing the entire payout for the game on one play or by one player.

In sports betting, the point spread is a number set by oddsmakers to level the playing field between two teams and drive betting action on both sides. The spread relates directly to the margin of victory in any given game, as the favorite must win by that amount to “cover the spread.”
posted by Brian B. at 11:12 AM on October 1 [1 favorite]

I never liked him because he competed at least as hard against his own teammates as he did against the opposing team.

He made everyone around him worse on purpose so he could shine the brighter.


All other aspects of his complex character aside, that is a seriously bad and uninformed take. I quite literally grew up watching Rose, attending hundreds of Reds games including all three consecutive night as he sought the hit to break Cobb's record. I've been reading and listening to both teammates and competitors' words about him for many decades and 'll take Johnny Bench's word from this morning's Dan Patrick show (which directly reflects the words of almost anyone who ever played with or against Rose) "It's sad (we have to relive) his legacy with the gambling part of it rather (than) the legacy with four-two-hundred and a gillion hits ... and the desire to make everybody better. Everywhere he went he made everybody better."
posted by thecincinnatikid at 11:13 AM on October 1 [1 favorite]

Pete Rose "is MLB's all-time leader in hits (4,256), games played (3,562), at-bats (14,053), singles (3,215) and outs (10,328)."

He won three World Series championships, three batting titles, one Most Valuable Player Award, two Gold Glove Awards, and the Rookie of the Year Award. He made 17 All-Star appearances in an unequaled five positions (second baseman, left fielder, right fielder, third baseman, and first baseman). He won two Gold Glove awards when he was an outfielder, in 1969 and 1970.

He should be in the Hall of Fame.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:27 AM on October 1 [3 favorites]

No he should not.

MLB made it clear from Shoeless Joe and the Black Sox, that certain things were unacceptable.
Those are the rules.

Rose broke those rules over and over. MLB had little choice. And despite the current gambling situation, it's baseball. Rules have always been rules, (more or less).
posted by Windopaene at 11:37 AM on October 1 [4 favorites]

Also, among the most memorable sports quotes: "I'd walk though hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball."
- Pete Rose
posted by thecincinnatikid at 11:40 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]

Everywhere he went he made everybody better."
posted by thecincinnatikid at 11:13 AM on October 1

He didn't make any of his teams better after 1981 when, in the self-centered pursuit of an individual record, he scuffed his way to a decidedly subpar .261/.348/.315 batting line. Most players with those numbers would have been benched or released. Hell, Rose himself probably would have *hated* a teammate who was bringing down the team like that in pursuit of personal glory.
posted by The Notorious SRD at 12:29 PM on October 1

.261 is borderline all-star these days...

No one seems to be able to hit these days. Maybe that's just being a Mariners fan.

EDIT: Remember when the Mendoza line was a thing?
posted by Windopaene at 1:10 PM on October 1 [1 favorite]

While Kal Daniels might make a case it was all Pete's record obsession, the fact is 82-84 teams weren't competitive and while 85-86 teams were competitive, the obsession was at least as large for Marge Schott and for Reds fans who'd watched his whole career. It was personal and palpable in the city where baseball was born and if you weren't a part of that, I humbly suggest your cold analytics, while accurately capturing his late career swoon, are completely missing a major part of that story that is beyond the player himself.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 1:50 PM on October 1

My dad told me that, having grown up in Cincinnati, he spend his undergraduate years at the University of Minnesota defending Pete Rose to the bitter end in arguments with his friends, right up until Pete admitted it himself.
posted by MtRChem at 5:07 PM on October 1

Pete Rose and the Limitations of Huste

Writers and poets wax on about how time wears you done no matter how famous you are. Thing is, while death is undefeated, aging somewhat gracefully is not a product of battling time and tides but of making good life decisions that don’t hand time and tides easy ways to batter one about. Pete Rose’s legacy as one of the greatest hitters of a professionally pitched baseball the world has ever seen – still one of the hardest sports-related things an athlete can aspire to do – aged poorly because Pete Rose the man never could discipline himself in life the way he did at the plate.

There is nothing romantic about this. Pete Rose doesn’t owe any fans anything. Fandom is a projection we put upon the players to create a personal connection where there otherwise wouldn’t be because we want there to be one. When I was a kid, I loved baseball and loved being a Pete Rose fan. I still love baseball, but evidence demands a verdict, and I long ago had an honest reckoning over Pete Rose. I believe Pete Rose when he says he loved baseball; I just wish Pete Rose had loved himself enough to reign in his worst impulses. Love without the discipline to control ourselves quickly becomes an excuse to do all sorts of things that are known to be wrong but get justified by uncontrolled passion.

posted by non canadian guy at 2:06 PM on October 2 [1 favorite]

Defector sums it up nicely:

After Pete Rose's death was announced on Monday night, a lot of clever microphone addicts opened their obligatory thumbnail summaries of him by explaining that he was "a complicated figure." It’s the sort of thing people say about people when they can’t believe that the person they're describing is really just what they appear to be. Nothing could have been more obviously wrong, in this case, including the concept of hitting on 17. The last thing in the world Pete Rose ever was, for all the things he was or purported to be, was complicated.

posted by Halloween Jack at 1:25 PM on October 4

He served his lifetime ban. Let him in the HoF now. Same with Shoeless Joe.

Bewildered, Pete Rose wanders out of an cornfield in Dyersville, IA.
posted by BrashTech at 2:28 PM on October 4