Pete Rose: An American Dilemma by Kostya Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page A

even to a major league game, and though he could tell you little about Rose’s baseball career, and even less about Rose’s willful violation of the game’s prohibition against gambling and the danger that it might violate the integrity of the sport, Parsons view of the matter is, not surprisingly, clear. “And, YES!” he wrote in an e-mail, answering a question that had not, in fact, been asked. “I do think Peter should be in the Hall of Fame.”
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    ROSE MAY have been the only one at TJs Place that morning having a reality series breakfast; but there were plenty of ex-ballplayers around making appearances for Hargrove. At 10:30 Yogi Berra walked in. In his late 80s, and thinned markedly in recent years, Berra had made it a priority to get to Cooperstown for induction weekend. He was accompanied by his wife and one of his sons, and though he moved haltingly, he appeared in high, clear spirits as he settled in near the front of TJs to greet people and exchange a few words. When Hargrove had advertised his weekend lineup in the weeks leading up to induction, the copy read, “Come say hello to a few familiar faces, get an autograph and shake hands with a legend.” Berra was the legend.
    Among those signing on Friday morning were Hall of Famers Juan Marichal and Rollie Fingers, along with former Black Yankee Bob Scott, and Art Shamsky, who may be best known as a member of the 1969 World Series Mets, but who was also, in ’60, a promising 18-year-old outfielder for the Class D Redlegs in Geneva, N.Y., where he spent a couple of months living with Pete Rose. They rented rooms in a family home on a quiet residential street. Both players earned $400 a month and Shamsky, with some speed and good power, was regarded as much the better prospect. At TJs, he and Rose greeted each other warmly and talked for a while.
    “There was no way that in Geneva you could have seen the player that Pete would become; just no possible way,” said Shamsky shortly after chatting with Rose. “He could hit a little and he ran hard, and he got to the park in the early morning when some of the rest of us were sleeping. That’s what you could have said about him. But he was small and very raw on defense and you would not have pegged him for a future big leaguer. The next time I played on a team with him”—two years later at Class A Macon (Ga.), where Rose hit .330 and scored 136 runs in 139 games—“that had changed. He was bigger and stronger and just much, much better. By then there was no doubting him.”
    Upon first being signed by the Reds and assigned to Geneva, Rose had literally run around Braddock Street shouting, “I’m leaving! I’m leaving! I got a contract to play ball!” But he soon found himself homesick in the small, remote Eastern college town. LaVerne came out and stayed nearby for a couple of weeks to help ease him in. Uncle Buddy visited as well. Harry drove out and met the team when it played a series in Erie. While some of the other players enjoyed the freedom of being on their own and the opportunity to drink beer together in local bars—“I had come from Missouri where the drinking age was 21,” says Shamsky. “In Geneva it was 18, so there was that”—Pete did not drink alcohol or go out or do much of anything except get to the park early and stay late. A letter written to him that summer from a Reds scout who knew Pete’s father Harry (a letter, incidentally, that Rose included in his 2004 memoir) described Pete as being “down in the dumps” and encouraged him to buck up. There were apple and pear trees in the hills around Geneva and some people grew grapes for wine. On damp summer evenings, mosquitoes dispersed around the Redlegs’ Shuron Park, dining on the several hundred fans or more who attended each game.
    One Redlegs teammate, the pitcher Dan Neville, whose career faded before he hit the big leagues, said that the homesickness of Rose and a few other teammates was so profound—and this now