Primus inter pares
and the Legacy of Pete Rose
BY MATT DACEY
The mid-seventies was an interesting time to be an adolescent. Our heroes were, on one level, larger than life. And on another level, they were comically crude. Evel Knievel. Archie Bunker. Fonzie. Kiss. Fred G. Sanford. And Pete Rose.
While Pete is inextricably tied to the city of Cincinnati, for a moment in time, he embodied the game of baseball in the hearts and minds of fans across the country more than any other player. I learned that myself when my family moved away from Cincinnati to Arizona in 1977 when I was 10.
As I met kids at school and in the neighborhood, when I told them I was from Cincinnati, the first question I was asked was if I had ever met Pete Rose. At that point, I hadn’t, but I did have an autographed ball that my parents got me for my first communion in 1974, and I was happy to show it to them.
During the first ten years of my life, Pete led the Reds to five National League West Division titles, three National League Championships, and two World Championships. To be a kid that age, at that time, in Cincinnati meant that you never knew the Reds to be anything other than winners. And right in the middle of it all was a guy who was actually from Cincinnati. Pete Rose was one of us. And we were winners.
The other seven players who made up the Great Eight, a team that many consider to be the greatest of all-time, were nothing to sneeze at, either. Johnny Bench. Joe Morgan. Tony Perez. Ken Griffey. Dave Concepcion. George Foster. Cesar Geronimo. We adored all of those guys, but because he was from Cincinnati, Pete was on a tier unto himself.
And if you were a kid who suddenly found himself living 1800 miles away from Cincinnati, Pete Rose was a part of your very identity.
Pete left Cincinnati for Philadelphia for more money after the 1978 season, and that coincided with my family’s move from Arizona to New Mexico in early 1979. I was so busy adjusting to my family’s second big move in 18 months, and so far away from Cincinnati, that I was barely able to process Pete’s departure.
When I met kids in Albuquerque and told them I was from Cincinnati, almost nobody asked me about Pete. He was a Phillie now, and wasn’t quite so larger than life. But when he led the Philadelphia Phillies to their first World Championship ever in 1980, you had to admit that he was still pretty badass, even as cracks started to emerge in the façade.
In 1984, Pete came back to Cincinnati as a player-manager for the Reds. He was 43 years old at that point, but he was close enough to Ty Cobb’s all-time hits record that it made sense for him to continue playing long enough to surpass it. He did so in Cincinnati in September 1985, which was the same month I moved from New Mexico to Lexington.
The last time I saw Pete appear as a player was July 17, 1986. It was a day game against the Phillies, and it was my first game since moving back the previous fall. One of my best friends from New Mexico, Richard, was visiting before going to boot camp at Camp Lejeune, and together we got to see Pete hit a triple in the bottom of the 11th inning to drive in the winning run in a game the Reds won, 7-6. It would turn out to be the last triple of Pete Rose’s career. It was also the day that I drank my first legal beer, as the drinking age for beer and wine in Ohio that time was 19, and I had turned 19 in May. So that day for me was a last gasp of childhood in a couple of different ways, as well as a first sip of adulthood. And there was Pete Rose, right in the middle of it all.
Too many words have already been written about Pete’s subsequent fall from grace, and here and now is neither the place nor the time to rehash the details, other than to say that it was one of the most heartbreaking things that could possibly happen to a couple of generations worth of kids from Cincinnati. The chip on his shoulder that Pete carried so well on the field getting more hits and winning more games than anybody who ever played the game, he didn’t carry so well later on. That chip on his shoulder hastened his downfall, and ultimately, Pete Rose’s worst enemy was Pete Rose.
I finally got to meet Pete in 2012. Another Cincinnati kid, Barry Larkin, was being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame after a stellar 18-year career spent entirely in Cincinnati, highlighted by a World Championship in 1990, the last time the Reds won a World Series. My friend Peter had the foresight to book a hotel room in Oneonta, New York, near Cooperstown, the day it was announced that Barry would be inducted, and we were there for the induction ceremony.
As we made our way back into town after the ceremony, we saw that Pete was signing and taking pictures at a memorabilia shop, and we immediately decided to do it. You could have your photo taken with Pete, have it printed, and Pete would sign it. And while you were waiting for them to print it, you got to sit and chat with Pete for a few minutes. I told him that I saw the last triple of his career, and he immediately said “Bottom of the 11th against Tom Gorman. Drove in the winning run, and we beat the Phillies, 7-6.” Off the top of his head.
Pete Rose was a deeply flawed human being, to be sure. Honestly though, most of us are. But most of us don’t have to endure seeing our flaws thoroughly and publicly documented, over and over again, for decades.
And still, nearly a half-century removed from the peak of his playing days, Pete Rose remains a significant part of the equation of what it means to be Cincinnatian.
Long before the term “small market” existed in sports, Pete Rose’s hustle showed us, and showed the world, that Cincinnati was every bit as important as New York or Los Angeles or Chicago. Pete embedded himself into the very definition of what it means to be “from Cincinnati.”
For all of his flaws, I will be forever grateful that I existed on the same planet at the same time as Pete Rose.
Matt Dacey lives in Lexington and is an Ace contributing writer.
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