🌹Pete Rose (4/14/41 - 9/30/24)🌹

Now that he's croaked they can put his plaque in the HOF, in the men's room...

Wow...where to start? He was a sports hero to me during the first 20 years or so of my life. When he came back to manage the Reds in the 80s (manager/player), he probably saved baseball in Cincinnati. My cousin took my brother and me to Riverfront Stadium in June 1984 to watch the Reds play the San Diego Padres in a doubleheader (first place was on the line). Pete started the second game and got a single up the middle his first at-bat...the entire stadium chanted "PEEETTTEEE!!!" He was practically worshipped in Cincinnati.

My brother and I knew someone from our hometown who told us this story about Pete. He went to see the Reds in Florida during Spring Training one season and was watching Pete take batting practice. Pete held up his hands and said, "See these hands? These are the hands of a .300 hitter!" That same confidence/cockiness (and probably arrogance) helped to make him a great baseball player...but it also helped lead to his downfall as well.

Pete was his own worst enemy. If he had told the truth from the beginning about betting on baseball, who knows what would have happened? But he was really nasty to people who said he bet on baseball and he had a lot of people defending him... until he finally admitted some years back that he did indeed bet on baseball. The rules were very clear about that and Pete broke them. The ironic thing is that the "powers that be" who run MLB have done (IMO) far more damage to the game since then than Pete ever did (Baseball was my favorite sport growing up, but it hardly registers in the "public conscience" anymore...East and West Coasts excluded... I'm talking more about "Middle America").

He leaves such a complex legacy. RIP, Peter Edward Rose. 😥

Did he choose #14 because his birthday was on the 14th? My daughter was #14 for this reason.