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

O’Toole, “and I don’t think I ever saw him get thrown out trying to take an extra base. Not once. It must have happened. Of course it must have. But I remember many things and I don’t remember that. A lot of close plays, a lot of dirt flying everywhere as he slid in headfirst, but when that dirt settled, Pete was safe.”
    Rose coveted statistics not least because he knew what statistics could bring. He had a keen affection for money and he delighted openly at how his salary, which began at the major league minimum, steadily grew. After making the All-Star Game, Rose asked around until he had enough information to figure out the average salary of all the other All-Stars—a cast of veteran and well-paid players—and then trumpeted the figure to Reds assistant G.M. Phil Seghi, as a means of bargaining. He earned $25,000 in 1966, $46,000 in ’67 and $55,000 in ’68, when his .335 batting average led the National League. “I’m one of the two most exciting white guys in baseball, me and Carl Yastrzemski,” said Rose. The next season his salary jumped to $85,000, nearly 3½ times the league average and more money than a Cincinnati Reds player had ever earned in a season. After winning the batting title again, in ’69, Rose vaulted past $100,000 a year.
    “You hear a lot of guys say you can’t make any money playing ball in Cincinnati,” Rose said in those years. “I don’t believe it. All you have to do is play every day and do your job.”
    To Rose that job included being a kind of cheerleader—for himself, certainly, but also for the Reds and for all of baseball. The press found him accommodating, often solicitous, and he amused them with his frankness and his humor. He was not frugal with his time and once sat for a long game-day interview with an ice dancer who was serving as a celebrity journalist for her hometown paper—in Vienna, Austria. “When someone wants to interview me I’ve usually got something to say,” Rose observed. 3
    Most of Rose’s teammates embraced his publicity seeking, considering that he spent much of his time with reporters talking not just about himself, but telling people why a baseball ticket was the best deal in town and extolling Tony Perez or Helms or any number of other Reds. When the Cincinnati ace Jim Maloney said “I’m just glad we have Pete on our side,” it was not simply because of all the hits Rose got and all the runs he scored. Rose delivered to the team an unflagging intensity. “He could bring a lesser player up to a higher caliber,” is how Reds pitcher Mel Queen put it. “Looking at him running out ground balls and walks and hustling all over the field [a teammate] had to say, ‘How can I do anything less than that?’ ”
    He arrived first to the ballpark and he stayed to the last and he did not slow down in between. That teammates never saw him on the trainer’s table was not because he never got hurt—diving attempts in the field had caused Rose a broken thumb and a badly bruised shoulder in those seasons; his style of play inevitably produced numerous nagging pains—but because he got to the trainer early and took care of any ailments or rehab work before most of the players had even arrived at the park. He didn’t want to miss a thing out on the field. He worked extra in the batting cage, and during the pregame he often fielded balls at several positions. Sometimes Rose volunteered to put on the catcher’s gear and warm up a pitcher. All the while his inimitable banter spouted forth. One teammate called Rose “Basil”, a play on basal metabolism. “You get tired just being around him,” said Helms, Pete’s roommate on the road. It was not unusual for Helms to be roused in the first light of day, just as Pete’s brother Dave had been roused years before, and to see Pete standing in front of the hotel-room mirror, completely nude, working on his swing.
    In the clubhouse Rose organized betting pools, on big horse races or other signature