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

is a remarkable claim, unique in the long span of Rose’s career—that it sapped Rose’s determination to win.
    “We were lousy [the Redlegs finished 54–75 and last in their six-team league] but four teams made the playoffs and it looked for a while like we might have a chance. Only some guys didn’t want any part of that, of having to stay around and play more games,” Neville recalls. “There was a let’s get the heck out of Geneva mentality, and Pete was one of the guys leading that. The idea was not to win at all costs, but instead to make sure we didn’t make the playoffs so that we could get home. Pete was an incredibly hard-nosed player when I played with him in Tampa the next season and whenever I saw him before and afterward. But that one year, for maybe two or three weeks, he was not one hundred and ten percent all the time.”
    In Geneva, Rose committed 36 errors in 85 games, primarily as a second baseman. Manager Reno DeBenedetti complained about the rough, sometimes costly aspects of Pete’s game. All in all, the scouting reports on Pete Rose out of Geneva were not strong. Still, he always slid headfirst at a time when no one was sliding headfirst, and he was a conspicuous competitor. At season’s end the fans voted Rose the team’s most popular player. Still, Geneva had slipped from fifth place to sixth as the summer wore on, and Neville (who would appear in a Reds uniform on the same Topps rookie card as Shamsky in 1965) says, “It was very surprising to me that some other players did not want to win at all costs. And so I have never forgotten it.”
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    AFTER HIS chat with Shamsky at TJs, Rose sat down for the breakfast with Kim and her children. They were joined by Vilacky—Pete’s guy from the Safe At Home memorabilia store—and Hargrove. An assistant on the reality show filming crew asked a waitress to remove all the ketchup bottles from the surrounding tables so that the labels would not appear on camera. Pete began telling Kiana and the kids about Yogi Berra, choosing as his touchstone Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series. “Yogi is the guy who ran out and hugged Larsen after the last out,” he said. “Yogi was short but solid, 185 pounds, and Larsen was holding Yogi off the ground like it was nothing. Usually if anyone picks anyone up it’s the catcher picking up the pitcher. It tells you Larsen was a big, strong guy.” 1
    Scrambled eggs and sausage arrived on thick white plates, and pancakes for the kids. Various people came by to talk with Pete and at one visitor’s request he spelled the names of Kiana’s children, Ashton and Cassie, at which he made a point of saying with a snicker, “that is Cassie with an a-s-s!” She was 14 years old at the time.
    Pete, wearing that fedora and loose aqua T-shirt, laughed a lot, pitching forward slightly in his chair when he did. He said how Ashton, who was then 10 years old, was not really a baseball player yet. “He’s a karate guy so far,” said Pete, tousling the boy’s hair. “I am not!” said Ashton, and Pete chuckled and shrugged. “I’m just their prop,” he said, gesturing to Kiana and the kids. Then Rose and Hargrove talked for a while about Pete’s prospects for ever getting into the Hall of Fame, winding toward Pete’s conclusion: “If I ever get in,” he said, “it will be when I’m dead.”
    There was a pause in the conversation—at the table everyone had turned to their food—and Pete, not eating yet, quickly grew restless, batting the plastic salt-and-pepper shakers back and forth between his forefingers. He looked around and saw at a nearby table a white-haired man wearing a Mets cap. A look of recognition flashed over Rose’s face. “Hey, how’ve you been?” he called out. “You still working?”
    The white-haired man looked surprised (“I have never met Pete Rose,” he would say later. “I think he thought I was someone else.”) but he responded, “No, I’m not working