Free Pete Rose: An American Dilemma by Kostya Kennedy

moderate range and no throwing arm to speak of. Yet it wasn’t long before Leo Durocher, the Cubs manager, looked out from the dugout and said, “Rose looks like he was born out there.” 2 When he led the National League in outfield assists in ’68 he did so not with majestic throws from the deep corners but by positioning, savvy and hustle. He anticipated. He charged in hard to field base hits. He found ways to get an out when he had no business getting one. Rose’s crashes into the sidewall in pursuit of foul fly balls—during one otherwise unremarkable 6–3 win over the Pirates at Crosley Field, May of ’67, he toppled into the stands twice, both times being bruised on the face and both times making the catch—became so frequent that someone in the Reds bullpen down the leftfield line had the designated assignment to keep an eye on Rose, to try to get over and break his fall so that he didn’t get hurt. Rose later changed positions again, moving from left to right. He played some centerfield as well when the need arose. In ’69 he won a Gold Glove.
    Many around the league groused at Pete for his flash and his bubbling confidence. “If you didn’t know him you would think he was cocky,” said Henry Aaron, greatly understating. Rose strutted on the field, more so after making a good play, and he chirped noisily as he took his lead off first base. When he drew a walk, he took off racing down the first base line. (He had gotten the idea from Enos Slaughter, the Cardinals spikes-up igniter and an All-Star during Pete’s youth.) “Let’s stick it in Rose’s ear, then see how fast he goes to first on a walk,” Phillies’ manager Gene Mauch called out angrily during Rose’s rookie season.
    Soon, though, it became clear that beneath Rose’s bluster whirred the real deal, an exceptional and deeply committed talent. It was Mauch himself who, after Rose had led the Reds in batting for a second straight season in 1966, declared that given the way Rose elevated the Reds on the field, he had become a perennial MVP contender. “Rose is now being recognized for what he does, not how he does it,” Mauch said with an air of resignation and even surprise. As Rose himself observed: “I sneaked up on ’em. They were so busy calling me Charlie Hustle and Hollywood they weren’t looking at the statistics.”
    He created the most compelling statistics, of course, with his bat, leading the league in base hits in 1965 (209) and again in ’68 (210), earning regard as baseball’s best switch-hitter even in the years when Maury Wills and Tom Tresh and, yes, the aging Mantle were still making their marks. “Never mind the switch-hitting,” said Mets manager Wes Westrum. “This guy is one of baseball’s best hitters period.” Rose had vowed to become the game’s “first $100,000 player who isn’t a home run hitter. I gotta. I just gotta.” Some labeled him a singles hitter but the singles were just the half of it. He was good for 35 to 40 doubles a year, right near the top of the league, stroking line drives from foul line to foul line and into the gaps. He hit about a dozen home runs each season and invariably finished among the top 10 in triples. Rose stated his goals of 200 hits and 100 runs scored each year. He made the first of his 17 All-Star Games in ’65.
    Rose was rarely a stolen base threat—raw speed being another in the long list of natural skills he did not possess—but he was unquestionably the best base runner on the Reds, and one of the very best in either league. He carved his way around the diamond with a sense of mission and by smarts as much as intuition. He judged the outfielders before he came to bat, noting who was playing too far off the foul line, or a few strides too deep. He knew every fielder’s arm strength and he knew when to put it to the test. It was nothing for Rose to go first to third on a single to leftfield.
    “I played with Pete for four years [1963 through ’66],” says