Telander: Reminiscing on Pete Rose, and the luck that finally found the Hit King

CHICAGO - Pete Rose was sitting alone in a wooden chair, behind a table near the front of the sports paraphernalia store. There was nobody else in the place that I could see except an employee behind the sales counter and a young Asian-American woman who occasionally walked past Pete and then sat silently on a chair behind him. 

In time, I’d find out this was his longtime girlfriend, Kiana Kim, a former Playboy centerfold model and actress, who was 39 years his junior.

Pete was here selling autographed baseballs. He was always here, it seemed, making his presence known in the middle of this tiny, picturesque town in upstate New York during Hall of Fame induction week. 

Unsanctioned and unwanted by baseball’s powers-that-be – since he had been banned for life and would never be eligible to get voted into the Hall – he was symbolically hoisting a middle finger to the whole shebang.

Year after year he hoisted it. Never invited, never embarrassed, always on the make.

Besides earning some cash, he was also, of course, pleading his case for reinstatement to the game in the most public way, something he’d been doing almost non-stop since 1989 when commissioner Bart Giamatti had ruled and his successor, Fay Vincent, had upheld, that Rose had bet on baseball games while active as a player and manager. Rose had even signed the banishment papers himself.

Gambling on the game, of course, was taboo. Signs leading into every major league clubhouse announce this clear as day. Rule 21(d) was introduced in 1921 by then-commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, posted on every clubhouse door in 1927, and was unequivocal in its terms: gambling by anyone on a game in which that person played or managed meant permanent banishment from all of Major League Baseball.

I sat down with Pete for a chat. He was always great to talk to, open, funny, insightful, memory like an elephant, feisty. The crowd was elsewhere. Pete had time. Naturally, our conversation turned to his banishment.

He was fired up. He was a victim. He was unfairly targeted. He was ``Charlie Hustle,’’ for God’s sake, ``Headfirst Pete,’’ the guy with the most at bats, the most games, the most hits in baseball history.

He looked me in the eye. That famous jaw set like stone.

``You think since 1919 I’m the only f---ing guy to bet on baseball?’’ he said.

It was like he was letting me into his little circle of knowledge, proving a fact, making his case to the jury.

It was convincing. No, I’m sure he wasn’t the only f---ing guy.

I bought an autographed ball and left, pondering.

Hmm. The issue wasn’t whether other people bet. The issue was he got caught, and he couldn’t bring himself to admit it, to apologize, to ask forgiveness, to do penance. His ego refused.

Indeed, former commissioner Vincent said shortly after Rose died last fall at age 82 that he and Giamatti (who died in 1989) both thought that had Rose done those forgiveness things, ``he would have been in the Hall of Fame a long time ago.’’

Now current commissioner Rob Manfred has lifted Rose's ban, saying, basically, that in death all is forgiven. Thus, in 2028 Rose could be elected into the Hall of the ``immortals,’’ get his plaque with Ruth, Mantle, DiMaggio, Gibson, and the rest.

Of course, Rose is dead. One is reminded here of the Cubs' Ron Santo, a good fellow who so desperately wanted to be elected into the Hall of Fame, and finally got in – a year after he died.

There is deep pathos in posthumous honors. Do the dead care?

``Shoeless’’ Joe Jackson, of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, has also been reinstated by Manfred, plus 14 other players and one owner who were kicked out for various sins. So many thoughts. Fair? Unfair? Are Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Clemens, Palmeiro and other players tainted by steroid suspicion ready to be absolved by Hall of Fame voters?

Because gambling is everywhere now does that absolve everybody of everything from the past? Does permanent mean anything?

In a sense, laws are arbitrary – what one day is immoral and illegal might be sanctioned and promoted the next. Marijuana? I can now buy pot legally at a shop two blocks from my house, buy enough in a week that would have put me in prison for years not long ago. Gamble? Absolutely. The state wants you to. Lotto! Bet anywhere on anything. Our cell phones are our casinos.

That ball signed by Pete didn’t cost much – $30 or $35, as I recall – and the value of it wasn’t on my mind. I’m not a collector, not a gear freak. How much could the thing be worth, anyway? Rose signed thousands of balls and bats and the like, maybe tens of thousands of such things. In Las Vegas, he set up camp year round and signed and signed. And he always lobbied for his inclusion into the game he claimed to love so dearly.

I’d give the ball to one of my kids, I thought. I already had another ball he’d signed in Cooperstown in1999, a yellowing ball with National League president Leonard S. Coleman’s ink stamp on it. I’d talked to Pete back then and felt buying a ball was fair pay for our conversation.

But I looked at this more recent one when I got out of the store. He’d personalized it for me. ``Rick,’’ he wrote, ``Good Luck.’’

Old Pete, I thought. I chuckled. That was nice of him, I thought. I’d keep this one too. But I wasn’t the one who needed good luck.

Dig deeper:

Read more on Pete Rose, including his passing in 2024, why he was banned for life from baseball and how his reinstatement came to be:

• Former Chicago White Sox great 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson, Pete Rose and more reinstated by MLB.
• Why was Pete Rose banned from baseball? What to know after MLB's hit king reinstated.
• MLB hit king Pete Rose dies at 83.

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