October 1, 2024 • 19 mins
Rob looks back on memories of his close friend, the late Pete Rose, and tells several stories that help paint the picture of not only his illustrious career as the all-time MLB hit leader, but also who Pete was off the field as well!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to the Rob Dibble Show.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm going to give you a lineup that I had
as teammates. Okay, just Aman, this is my teammates in
my career. Okay, Catcher Johnny Bench Hall of Famer third
base of Mike Schmidt Hall of Famer shortstop, and your
teammate Barry Larkin, Hall of Famer, second baseman, Joe Morgan,
(00:25):
Hall of Famer, first baseman, Tony Brez Hall of Famer,
left field, Frank Robinson, Hall of Famer, center field, Tam
Rains Hall of Famer, right field, Andre Dalton Hall of Famer,
Left Ham pitcher, Steve Carlton, Hall of Famer, Ryan Ham
pitcher of Tom sever Hall of Famer. Is that teammates
(00:45):
the kind of teammates you want? I got a Hall
of Fame lineup of players I've played with. Do you
think anybody else can say that this? I can't even
make that team?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Team? Oh my goodness, Oh he would be mess. The
hit King is gone. And that was an interview we
did a while back, and he just talked about some
of the great players he's been on teams. Three time
World champion, seventeen time All Star. But I mean that's
that's the thing. Mike Schmidt talked about how Pete made
(01:26):
him a better player and talked about some of the
things that Pete as a hitter was, you know, don't
doubt yourself, just be aggressive, hitline drives. And I remember,
and this is long before I knew that Pete and
Mike played together. So Mike Schmidt describing his own philosophy.
(01:47):
I was like, okay, you know, where'd you get that from?
And then this was actually I just heard this in
the documentary. I watched I Pete like a month ago
and talking about how he went from the Reds and
played from nineteen sixty three to nineteen seventy eight nine ish,
I think seventy nine he went to the Phillies. So
just think you're in one place for like fifteen years.
(02:08):
Now you go to a new place with the Phillies,
and you seek out the best player on the Phillies
at the time, which is Mike Schmidt, and you make
Mike Schmidt better by just your conversations on hitting. Now,
Pete wasn't a power hitter. Pete probably had thirty eight
hundred base hits out of his you know, forty two
hundred hits. But you're you're looking at a Hall of
(02:31):
Fame third basement that had over five hundred home runs
that believes that Pete made him turn the corner in
his career in their conversations around the batting cage. So
that's what I'm talking about. I mean, Pete was selfless
when it came to helping everybody else, and he kind
of couldn't help himself, you know, off the field with
(02:53):
some of his vices, but on the field, nobody loved
to talk baseball more than Pete. Nobody knew more about
the game than Pete in describing everything. I mean, just
listening to Pete when he was managing, there's there's so
many pictures of him just staring. He's like got his
arms on the fence and he's staring at the field.
(03:14):
He's not paying attention to anything but the game, the coach,
he's the coaches on the other team, the players, and
and then you'd walk over and he'd be like, look
at this guy, look at this shortstop. Now, what what
do you think about this? And it was like a
curveball that was being called, and he's like, watch watch
his feet and watch him go towards the weak side
now because he's gonna throw some off speed and he'll
(03:36):
give away the pitch. I mean, he knew every little
idiosyncrasy of every player on every team we played against.
And he's like, listen, this is the kind of stuff.
You have to be a student of the game. He goes,
and if you're a hitter, just think about that. If
you're hitting, and now I see this guy go into
the hole because you're gonna throw me a breaking ball.
That's the tip. I don't need to watch the pitcher.
(03:57):
I know breaking ball is coming by watching the infield.
And that was some of the stuff that I think.
Like I said, the reason I'm bitter is you've had
thirty five years of where Pete could have been giving
handing down baseball knowledge. Now. Do I want him to
talk about his life off the field. No, But as
far as baseball went, that guy was in encyclopedia when
(04:17):
it came to just every little tidbit of information was
in his brain and was in real time during a
baseball game. He's studying it, even after like forty years
of playing it and being around it.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
If I was major League baseball, I would want him
to talk about his life off the field, because I
think those lessons are very needed today. I mean, everything
that Pete Rose did on the field and off the
field is getting magnified with Major League Baseball in twenty
twenty four.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Like gosh, talking about on the field, how about Otani
and his guy Ippi. That's just one.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I mean, there's been five players in the last two
years that have been punished by Major League beeverball because
of gambling in every sport. You're right, like the NFL
needs this kind of talk for all of their players,
and you know, like Pete's not the best messenger for it,
but look at his authority.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Oh yeah, he knows. I don't know the movie with
Leonardo DiCaprio where he like, you know, fakes his way
and becomes like a fake pilot and all this kind
of stuff and then he passes bad checks. And also
they hired that guy, the FBI hired that guy because
he was the foremost authority on cheating and forgery and
(05:30):
all of this stuff. So Pete would have been such
a great authority on this, you know, this messaging, you know,
and they do in the NFL, I know, they do
their Rookie Symposium. Major League Baseball does it, But you
need people like this to pass on even the worst thing.
Listen and I and it's what's funny about that. Again.
We would bring in members of crime families, the Colombo
(05:52):
crime family, Gambino, all these different crime families, bring them
into spring training and teach the players on what not
to do. That's that was their message, what how not
to get involved with the mafia, how not to get
involved with gambling. They brought in Art Schleister, the football
player who got involved with gambling, was was doing all
(06:13):
kinds of stuff with gambling. But for some reason they
just were so anti Pete. Maybe his arrogance, maybe his pride,
but they just didn't want to use him that way,
which to me, I felt was a no brainer. It's like, listen,
the hit King's one thing. That's that's one thing that
you know, you can't get passed with Pete because he's
very proud of that kind of stuff should be. But
(06:33):
the other stuff, he also wanted to repent that stuff
and you know, make a difference and not letting other
people go down those roads that he went down, and
he was never allowed to do that.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Do you think they're going to put him in posthumously
in the in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I don't in the near future, No, I don't. What
I know what I learned when I was working at
ESPN twenty years ago was that Bud Seilig. And this
is crazy, absolutely crazy, because my father, when my father
was still alive in the nineties, after Pete had been
suspended in nineteen eighty nine, Bart Giamatti, who was the
(07:12):
then commissioner, passed away about a year later after the
whole thing of a heart attack. My father told me
all of this stuff Bart Giamotty was involved in and
was known for, had nothing to do with Pete, and
that was the way Bart lived his life. And so
mister Giamatti dying, Bud Sealeigue had a meeting with ESPN
and Major League Baseball was adamant that while he was
(07:36):
still alive, Pete would never step in the Hall of Fame,
you know. And Rob Manfred, who was the heir to
Bud Seelig, is he's going to keep the same thing going.
He's not going to allow Pete in the Hall of
Fame because they believe Pete caused Bart Gmotty's death. They
believe Pete and his gambling and gambling on baseball was
(07:59):
such a stain on the game. You know, everything that
they're doing right now, you know the hypocritical stuff that
they're doing right now with casinos and gambling and DraftKings,
et cetera. That's okay, that's okay. But Pete's still a
pariah when it comes to that. So no, I honestly
don't think they'll let Pete in the Hall of Fame.
Just like and again earlier on Dan Dakins's show, I said,
(08:20):
it's not just Pete that belongs in there. It's Barry Bonds,
seven time MVP. It's Roger Clemens, seven times Cy Young
Award winner, even a rod All of these guys, they
did their deal on the field. Whatever you want to
do to sort it out at the museum of the
Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, that's your business. I don't
judge them on that. I allow again, you want to
(08:41):
bring your kids in there, or your grandkids or whatnot
down the road fifty years from now. You want the
whole history of maid all of the awfulness as well,
you know, the whole steroid era should be in there.
All of this stuff deserves to be in there, not
on a positive note, but should be told. Whether it's
like a history museum and you're talking about the Holocaust
(09:02):
and World War two and World War One and the
Civil War, all of that stuff and all of its awfulness,
it's still history that needs to be told. So it's
not just Pete. Does Pete belong in the Hall of Fame?
All of these players deserve their their due, whether you
think it's positive or negative. And it's the same with
Pete or Barry or Roger Clemens, or Shilling or Andy Pettitt. Honestly,
(09:25):
because I watched these guys, I idolized some of these guys,
like how good they were at what they did, and
how hard it is to make it to the major
leagues and then be good for fifteen or twenty years
at your craft and you and did you grow the game?
Like forget Pete for a second, Barry Bonds. Did Barry
Bonds grow the game the time he was a baseball player?
(09:46):
Did Roger Clemens impact major League baseball? So that's the
way I kind of judge, you know, somebody's legacy not
just numbers, because now we've finally gotten away from numbers.
And put some of these, rightfully, guys that should be
Andre Dawson should be in there. Some of these guys
should be in there. And and again it's not the
whole story isn't told if Pete Rose isn't in there.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
And like you were telling us before the show started,
I don't know about Pete's story before he hits Cincinnati
reads like you know, I'm learning today about Buddy blowbamb
the bird dog scout that found him, was trying to
tell everybody to get him in, And you were saying,
if he's in the Hall of Fame, it's not going
to be I'm Pete Rose, look at me, I'm the best.
(10:26):
It's going to be telling the story of how he got.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Such an underdog story, right, That's that's the story I'm
trying to get out there. Not you know, I know
Pete's passed, But what I'm saying is when Pete was
a child, he was always looked down on his where
his status, his financial status was his family. As an athlete,
he's always small, small, he played football, he was he
(10:51):
lettered every year in football, he lettered every year in basketball,
letter every year in baseball. And still everybody's like this
guy sucks, this guy can't play at the next level.
So it's you you know, so this guy is a
success story from that standpoint. Again, so you see post
Pete managerial Pete did he bet on you know, again,
(11:12):
I'm not trying to whitewash that at all. That's part
of his history. But his early history when he's coming up,
served in the military, you know, served in the reserves.
While he was in the reserves, he got a lot
of his other teammates involved in this is during Vietnam
in the mid sixties, the late sixties. Can't remember what
(11:33):
Ford it was. It was in Kentucky, and again, was
very proud of that to the fact that so if
you saw the early haircuts of Pete, yes, and they
were military esque, and people would go like, oh wow,
that guy's kind of weird with those haircuts. No, he
was in the Army reserve. That's what Pete was doing
when he wasn't playing baseball. So, you know, there's so
(11:54):
many sides of Pete that people don't understand. And so
if you kind of you know, you know, had a
history more of him in the sixties, the seventies, the eighties,
you know, and those times were wild and imagine all
of this. I brought this up before. Pete never had
a drop of alcohol in his life, not a sip
of champagne. Hard to believe era within that era. And
(12:16):
then yes, he did do some other things, but I'm
not going to get into that because it's not my
story to tell. But at the same time, you know, Pete,
Pete was had other vices that were just as bad
as that so for me, but he did things the
right way. I mean the way he played the game.
Uh and you know, to way he treated people right,
the way he treated people. He treated you first class
(12:39):
even though you weren't going to treat him first class,
if that makes sense. He played the game hard even
though he didn't expect you to play it as hard
as him. You know, Kevin Curnan wrote a great article
on Ball nine. We have Kevin on all the time.
Maybe I got him on before the end of the
week to talk about Pete because he was so great
about this article. And the guy wrote the book that
we just had on, the Keith O'Brien book about Pete,
(13:00):
Charlie Hustle. Charlie Hustle, Pete one of his biggest problems
that he had with people was he was trying to
measure up all the time, and he was trying to
get you to measure up all the time. And what
annoyed him was there wasn't enough guys to do it,
you know. So that's why when he's like bringing up
these Hall of this Hall of Fame team that he
(13:20):
played on, and he's jokingly saying, I couldn't have made
that team. I couldn't have made the team that I
was on. If you look back at it and said, well, yeah, Pete,
you weren't that. You weren't as good as any of
those guys, even though he was.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Let's talk about the fun stuff. Now, I'm dressed up
in my red scar but I tried to match on purpose.
I wanted to get Kurt a pink kango hat with
a matching pink polo shirt. Nick Federico should have been dressed.
I mean, let's talk Taki man. You know Taki, and
you are one of the kings of Taki, but you
(13:54):
cannot hold a candle to the Emperor.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Attacking some things I refuse to wear. I mean I
did back in the day where some all leather outfits
which were hideous on me, not pretty. But Pete used
to wear silk pants, silk shirts, skin tight, and he
was built like a I don't know, a right or
left guard in football and five ft six. And then
(14:18):
he'd have the bad bowl haircut, which again he became
synonymous with the haircut just because you know what, he
was a no frills guy. And then then it was like, okay,
so you think you think I'm low class, Fine, I'll
act low cut class while I'm a multi millionaire. I
mean no, that was kind of the way Pete did
everything to spite you. You think you're spiting me. No,
(14:42):
I'm gonna spite you. I mean, I'm gonna still survive
even though you think I can't. And I'm gonna have
this bad haircut. Oh my god. There was so many
things that was tacking like I was just a friend
of my God pulled that right out of the head.
There you go, Norm Randy myself went back to side
autographs last year in s scenario the year before, and
(15:02):
Pete was doing his autograph session before He's got this
mink hat on. He looks like Daniel Boone, So Daniel
Boone would be wearing some kind of raccoon hat. Pete's
got a make hat on, okay, and it's it's idiots.
And the first thing I do is go, Pete, what
the hell with the hat? And he goes, what are
you talking about? It's three thousand dollars hat. Somebody gave
it to me. So again, if you knew Pete, it
(15:23):
was to love Pete, because Pete was like he knew
it was an awful looking hat. It didn't match his
awful looking outfit. And then he's got on Cardier glasses
because he needs him for reading, of course, but the
solid gold shane that's probably worth a hundred thousand dollars
hanging from it around his neck is pure Pete. He's
got an all gold Brightling watch. That's you know why,
(15:46):
because it's more gold than a Rolex, a gold rolex,
so it's probably costs more, probably costs one hundred g.
So that was Pete. I mean everything he did was
loud and tacky, but at the same time he was
a soft spoken guy, and he would do little things
for everybody that you'd never know about. And then you know,
like like when you're trashing him, he's already signed like
a dozen balls for you. Over here. While he was
(16:08):
calling you an a hole and all this other stuff
and making fun of you and all this stuff, he
just gave you like ten thousand dollars worth of balls
right here.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Tell people about, now you already talked about when he
allowed you to live in his house. Tell people about
when you walked into that house and what you like.
You had no idea about the decor or what you're
really walking into.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Just pulling up, getting the driveway. The front door's pink.
Of course, it's a five million dollar mansion on a
street full of mansions and plant City, which is kind
of It was out of the norm anyway, but it
was where a lot of people I guess were hiding
in Florida at the time. Walk inside. There's purple shag
carpeting everywhere. The the drapes that you'd pull but they're
(16:50):
hard were gold. It was like, you know, I don't
want to be disrespectful, maybe to a pimp or something,
but I swear to god, it was like right out
of the seventies. You know, I'm gonna get your or
a shaft, you know movie and and but it gets
worse as I go into the bathroom. All the fixtures
(17:10):
and I and I asked him. They wore twenty four
carrot gold. The the toilet pipes and stuff, twenty four
carrot gold. The jacuzzie had like gold thing. I'm like,
there's no way you did twenty four hair cold. I'm
just like, oh my god. So one thing to another
to another. It was there's this purple shag carpeting all
the way up. It was like an Austin Powers house house.
(17:32):
I guess I could, I could relate to it. But again,
that was Pete. That was Pete. Everything that you know,
every even the final pictures. I just saw where he
was living out in Vegas.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
All white.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
He's wearing all white. He's wearing all white. Yeah, I mean,
but he's he always had. Here's another thing, like, okay,
it's twenty twenty four. He's still wearing nineteen eighty five
styled jumpsuit like athletic, what do you call him? Yeah?
But but what sweatsuit? Yeah, so he's still wearing sweatsuits.
Eighty three year old man, he's still wearing sweatsuits because
(18:08):
he thinks he's cool, not broke. Don't fix it. That's right,
that's right. And the sad thing for me is how
frail he looked. The one thing about Pete was he
looked like a construction worker that was working a jack
just got off working a jackhammer arms. Okay, his mother
cut his hair with a with a spoon and it
was a bowl. And he and now it's time to
(18:28):
go out and and be like John Travolta in Saturday
Night Fever. And so I'm gonna I'm gonna have a
low cut shirt on. You're gonna see my chest, hair,
my one hundred thousand dollars worth of chains. You know,
you're not gonna know I'm a jackhammer guy. You're gonna
think that like I'm the dance king. Then I'm gonna
walk in there with my whole silk outfit on. That
was Pete. That was Pete. And and you knew like
(18:49):
when he got on the bus, when he got on
the airplane, and it wasn't just the hit king. He
was the king of the room like he and that's
how he had to be. But once once you he
settled that now we can just be we could be boys.
We can we can hang out and stuff
You're listening to the Rob Dibble Show.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm going to give you a lineup that I had
as teammates. Okay, just Aman, this is my teammates in
my career. Okay, Catcher Johnny Bench Hall of Famer third
base of Mike Schmidt Hall of Famer shortstop, and your
teammate Barry Larkin, Hall of Famer, second baseman, Joe Morgan,
(00:25):
Hall of Famer, first baseman, Tony Brez Hall of Famer,
left field, Frank Robinson, Hall of Famer, center field, Tam
Rains Hall of Famer, right field, Andre Dalton Hall of Famer,
Left Ham pitcher, Steve Carlton, Hall of Famer, Ryan Ham
pitcher of Tom sever Hall of Famer. Is that teammates
(00:45):
the kind of teammates you want? I got a Hall
of Fame lineup of players I've played with. Do you
think anybody else can say that this? I can't even
make that team?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Team? Oh my goodness, Oh he would be mess. The
hit King is gone. And that was an interview we
did a while back, and he just talked about some
of the great players he's been on teams. Three time
World champion, seventeen time All Star. But I mean that's
that's the thing. Mike Schmidt talked about how Pete made
(01:26):
him a better player and talked about some of the
things that Pete as a hitter was, you know, don't
doubt yourself, just be aggressive, hitline drives. And I remember,
and this is long before I knew that Pete and
Mike played together. So Mike Schmidt describing his own philosophy.
(01:47):
I was like, okay, you know, where'd you get that from?
And then this was actually I just heard this in
the documentary. I watched I Pete like a month ago
and talking about how he went from the Reds and
played from nineteen sixty three to nineteen seventy eight nine ish,
I think seventy nine he went to the Phillies. So
just think you're in one place for like fifteen years.
(02:08):
Now you go to a new place with the Phillies,
and you seek out the best player on the Phillies
at the time, which is Mike Schmidt, and you make
Mike Schmidt better by just your conversations on hitting. Now,
Pete wasn't a power hitter. Pete probably had thirty eight
hundred base hits out of his you know, forty two
hundred hits. But you're you're looking at a Hall of
(02:31):
Fame third basement that had over five hundred home runs
that believes that Pete made him turn the corner in
his career in their conversations around the batting cage. So
that's what I'm talking about. I mean, Pete was selfless
when it came to helping everybody else, and he kind
of couldn't help himself, you know, off the field with
(02:53):
some of his vices, but on the field, nobody loved
to talk baseball more than Pete. Nobody knew more about
the game than Pete in describing everything. I mean, just
listening to Pete when he was managing, there's there's so
many pictures of him just staring. He's like got his
arms on the fence and he's staring at the field.
(03:14):
He's not paying attention to anything but the game, the coach,
he's the coaches on the other team, the players, and
and then you'd walk over and he'd be like, look
at this guy, look at this shortstop. Now, what what
do you think about this? And it was like a
curveball that was being called, and he's like, watch watch
his feet and watch him go towards the weak side
now because he's gonna throw some off speed and he'll
(03:36):
give away the pitch. I mean, he knew every little
idiosyncrasy of every player on every team we played against.
And he's like, listen, this is the kind of stuff.
You have to be a student of the game. He goes,
and if you're a hitter, just think about that. If
you're hitting, and now I see this guy go into
the hole because you're gonna throw me a breaking ball.
That's the tip. I don't need to watch the pitcher.
(03:57):
I know breaking ball is coming by watching the infield.
And that was some of the stuff that I think.
Like I said, the reason I'm bitter is you've had
thirty five years of where Pete could have been giving
handing down baseball knowledge. Now. Do I want him to
talk about his life off the field. No, But as
far as baseball went, that guy was in encyclopedia when
(04:17):
it came to just every little tidbit of information was
in his brain and was in real time during a
baseball game. He's studying it, even after like forty years
of playing it and being around it.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
If I was major League baseball, I would want him
to talk about his life off the field, because I
think those lessons are very needed today. I mean, everything
that Pete Rose did on the field and off the
field is getting magnified with Major League Baseball in twenty
twenty four.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Like gosh, talking about on the field, how about Otani
and his guy Ippi. That's just one.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I mean, there's been five players in the last two
years that have been punished by Major League beeverball because
of gambling in every sport. You're right, like the NFL
needs this kind of talk for all of their players,
and you know, like Pete's not the best messenger for it,
but look at his authority.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Oh yeah, he knows. I don't know the movie with
Leonardo DiCaprio where he like, you know, fakes his way
and becomes like a fake pilot and all this kind
of stuff and then he passes bad checks. And also
they hired that guy, the FBI hired that guy because
he was the foremost authority on cheating and forgery and
(05:30):
all of this stuff. So Pete would have been such
a great authority on this, you know, this messaging, you know,
and they do in the NFL, I know, they do
their Rookie Symposium. Major League Baseball does it, But you
need people like this to pass on even the worst thing.
Listen and I and it's what's funny about that. Again.
We would bring in members of crime families, the Colombo
(05:52):
crime family, Gambino, all these different crime families, bring them
into spring training and teach the players on what not
to do. That's that was their message, what how not
to get involved with the mafia, how not to get
involved with gambling. They brought in Art Schleister, the football
player who got involved with gambling, was was doing all
(06:13):
kinds of stuff with gambling. But for some reason they
just were so anti Pete. Maybe his arrogance, maybe his pride,
but they just didn't want to use him that way,
which to me, I felt was a no brainer. It's like, listen,
the hit King's one thing. That's that's one thing that
you know, you can't get passed with Pete because he's
very proud of that kind of stuff should be. But
(06:33):
the other stuff, he also wanted to repent that stuff
and you know, make a difference and not letting other
people go down those roads that he went down, and
he was never allowed to do that.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Do you think they're going to put him in posthumously
in the in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I don't in the near future, No, I don't. What
I know what I learned when I was working at
ESPN twenty years ago was that Bud Seilig. And this
is crazy, absolutely crazy, because my father, when my father
was still alive in the nineties, after Pete had been
suspended in nineteen eighty nine, Bart Giamatti, who was the
(07:12):
then commissioner, passed away about a year later after the
whole thing of a heart attack. My father told me
all of this stuff Bart Giamotty was involved in and
was known for, had nothing to do with Pete, and
that was the way Bart lived his life. And so
mister Giamatti dying, Bud Sealeigue had a meeting with ESPN
and Major League Baseball was adamant that while he was
(07:36):
still alive, Pete would never step in the Hall of Fame,
you know. And Rob Manfred, who was the heir to
Bud Seelig, is he's going to keep the same thing going.
He's not going to allow Pete in the Hall of
Fame because they believe Pete caused Bart Gmotty's death. They
believe Pete and his gambling and gambling on baseball was
(07:59):
such a stain on the game. You know, everything that
they're doing right now, you know the hypocritical stuff that
they're doing right now with casinos and gambling and DraftKings,
et cetera. That's okay, that's okay. But Pete's still a
pariah when it comes to that. So no, I honestly
don't think they'll let Pete in the Hall of Fame.
Just like and again earlier on Dan Dakins's show, I said,
(08:20):
it's not just Pete that belongs in there. It's Barry Bonds,
seven time MVP. It's Roger Clemens, seven times Cy Young
Award winner, even a rod All of these guys, they
did their deal on the field. Whatever you want to
do to sort it out at the museum of the
Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, that's your business. I don't
judge them on that. I allow again, you want to
(08:41):
bring your kids in there, or your grandkids or whatnot
down the road fifty years from now. You want the
whole history of maid all of the awfulness as well,
you know, the whole steroid era should be in there.
All of this stuff deserves to be in there, not
on a positive note, but should be told. Whether it's
like a history museum and you're talking about the Holocaust
(09:02):
and World War two and World War One and the
Civil War, all of that stuff and all of its awfulness,
it's still history that needs to be told. So it's
not just Pete. Does Pete belong in the Hall of Fame?
All of these players deserve their their due, whether you
think it's positive or negative. And it's the same with
Pete or Barry or Roger Clemens, or Shilling or Andy Pettitt. Honestly,
(09:25):
because I watched these guys, I idolized some of these guys,
like how good they were at what they did, and
how hard it is to make it to the major
leagues and then be good for fifteen or twenty years
at your craft and you and did you grow the game?
Like forget Pete for a second, Barry Bonds. Did Barry
Bonds grow the game the time he was a baseball player?
(09:46):
Did Roger Clemens impact major League baseball? So that's the
way I kind of judge, you know, somebody's legacy not
just numbers, because now we've finally gotten away from numbers.
And put some of these, rightfully, guys that should be
Andre Dawson should be in there. Some of these guys
should be in there. And and again it's not the
whole story isn't told if Pete Rose isn't in there.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
And like you were telling us before the show started,
I don't know about Pete's story before he hits Cincinnati
reads like you know, I'm learning today about Buddy blowbamb
the bird dog scout that found him, was trying to
tell everybody to get him in, And you were saying,
if he's in the Hall of Fame, it's not going
to be I'm Pete Rose, look at me, I'm the best.
(10:26):
It's going to be telling the story of how he got.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Such an underdog story, right, That's that's the story I'm
trying to get out there. Not you know, I know
Pete's passed, But what I'm saying is when Pete was
a child, he was always looked down on his where
his status, his financial status was his family. As an athlete,
he's always small, small, he played football, he was he
(10:51):
lettered every year in football, he lettered every year in basketball,
letter every year in baseball. And still everybody's like this
guy sucks, this guy can't play at the next level.
So it's you you know, so this guy is a
success story from that standpoint. Again, so you see post
Pete managerial Pete did he bet on you know, again,
(11:12):
I'm not trying to whitewash that at all. That's part
of his history. But his early history when he's coming up,
served in the military, you know, served in the reserves.
While he was in the reserves, he got a lot
of his other teammates involved in this is during Vietnam
in the mid sixties, the late sixties. Can't remember what
(11:33):
Ford it was. It was in Kentucky, and again, was
very proud of that to the fact that so if
you saw the early haircuts of Pete, yes, and they
were military esque, and people would go like, oh wow,
that guy's kind of weird with those haircuts. No, he
was in the Army reserve. That's what Pete was doing
when he wasn't playing baseball. So, you know, there's so
(11:54):
many sides of Pete that people don't understand. And so
if you kind of you know, you know, had a
history more of him in the sixties, the seventies, the eighties,
you know, and those times were wild and imagine all
of this. I brought this up before. Pete never had
a drop of alcohol in his life, not a sip
of champagne. Hard to believe era within that era. And
(12:16):
then yes, he did do some other things, but I'm
not going to get into that because it's not my
story to tell. But at the same time, you know, Pete,
Pete was had other vices that were just as bad
as that so for me, but he did things the
right way. I mean the way he played the game.
Uh and you know, to way he treated people right,
the way he treated people. He treated you first class
(12:39):
even though you weren't going to treat him first class,
if that makes sense. He played the game hard even
though he didn't expect you to play it as hard
as him. You know, Kevin Curnan wrote a great article
on Ball nine. We have Kevin on all the time.
Maybe I got him on before the end of the
week to talk about Pete because he was so great
about this article. And the guy wrote the book that
we just had on, the Keith O'Brien book about Pete,
(13:00):
Charlie Hustle. Charlie Hustle, Pete one of his biggest problems
that he had with people was he was trying to
measure up all the time, and he was trying to
get you to measure up all the time. And what
annoyed him was there wasn't enough guys to do it,
you know. So that's why when he's like bringing up
these Hall of this Hall of Fame team that he
(13:20):
played on, and he's jokingly saying, I couldn't have made
that team. I couldn't have made the team that I
was on. If you look back at it and said, well, yeah, Pete,
you weren't that. You weren't as good as any of
those guys, even though he was.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Let's talk about the fun stuff. Now, I'm dressed up
in my red scar but I tried to match on purpose.
I wanted to get Kurt a pink kango hat with
a matching pink polo shirt. Nick Federico should have been dressed.
I mean, let's talk Taki man. You know Taki, and
you are one of the kings of Taki, but you
(13:54):
cannot hold a candle to the Emperor.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Attacking some things I refuse to wear. I mean I
did back in the day where some all leather outfits
which were hideous on me, not pretty. But Pete used
to wear silk pants, silk shirts, skin tight, and he
was built like a I don't know, a right or
left guard in football and five ft six. And then
(14:18):
he'd have the bad bowl haircut, which again he became
synonymous with the haircut just because you know what, he
was a no frills guy. And then then it was like, okay,
so you think you think I'm low class, Fine, I'll
act low cut class while I'm a multi millionaire. I
mean no, that was kind of the way Pete did
everything to spite you. You think you're spiting me. No,
(14:42):
I'm gonna spite you. I mean, I'm gonna still survive
even though you think I can't. And I'm gonna have
this bad haircut. Oh my god. There was so many
things that was tacking like I was just a friend
of my God pulled that right out of the head.
There you go, Norm Randy myself went back to side
autographs last year in s scenario the year before, and
(15:02):
Pete was doing his autograph session before He's got this
mink hat on. He looks like Daniel Boone, So Daniel
Boone would be wearing some kind of raccoon hat. Pete's
got a make hat on, okay, and it's it's idiots.
And the first thing I do is go, Pete, what
the hell with the hat? And he goes, what are
you talking about? It's three thousand dollars hat. Somebody gave
it to me. So again, if you knew Pete, it
(15:23):
was to love Pete, because Pete was like he knew
it was an awful looking hat. It didn't match his
awful looking outfit. And then he's got on Cardier glasses
because he needs him for reading, of course, but the
solid gold shane that's probably worth a hundred thousand dollars
hanging from it around his neck is pure Pete. He's
got an all gold Brightling watch. That's you know why,
(15:46):
because it's more gold than a Rolex, a gold rolex,
so it's probably costs more, probably costs one hundred g.
So that was Pete. I mean everything he did was
loud and tacky, but at the same time he was
a soft spoken guy, and he would do little things
for everybody that you'd never know about. And then you know,
like like when you're trashing him, he's already signed like
a dozen balls for you. Over here. While he was
(16:08):
calling you an a hole and all this other stuff
and making fun of you and all this stuff, he
just gave you like ten thousand dollars worth of balls
right here.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Tell people about, now you already talked about when he
allowed you to live in his house. Tell people about
when you walked into that house and what you like.
You had no idea about the decor or what you're
really walking into.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Just pulling up, getting the driveway. The front door's pink.
Of course, it's a five million dollar mansion on a
street full of mansions and plant City, which is kind
of It was out of the norm anyway, but it
was where a lot of people I guess were hiding
in Florida at the time. Walk inside. There's purple shag
carpeting everywhere. The the drapes that you'd pull but they're
(16:50):
hard were gold. It was like, you know, I don't
want to be disrespectful, maybe to a pimp or something,
but I swear to god, it was like right out
of the seventies. You know, I'm gonna get your or
a shaft, you know movie and and but it gets
worse as I go into the bathroom. All the fixtures
(17:10):
and I and I asked him. They wore twenty four
carrot gold. The the toilet pipes and stuff, twenty four
carrot gold. The jacuzzie had like gold thing. I'm like,
there's no way you did twenty four hair cold. I'm
just like, oh my god. So one thing to another
to another. It was there's this purple shag carpeting all
the way up. It was like an Austin Powers house house.
(17:32):
I guess I could, I could relate to it. But again,
that was Pete. That was Pete. Everything that you know,
every even the final pictures. I just saw where he
was living out in Vegas.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
All white.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
He's wearing all white. He's wearing all white. Yeah, I mean,
but he's he always had. Here's another thing, like, okay,
it's twenty twenty four. He's still wearing nineteen eighty five
styled jumpsuit like athletic, what do you call him? Yeah?
But but what sweatsuit? Yeah, so he's still wearing sweatsuits.
Eighty three year old man, he's still wearing sweatsuits because
(18:08):
he thinks he's cool, not broke. Don't fix it. That's right,
that's right. And the sad thing for me is how
frail he looked. The one thing about Pete was he
looked like a construction worker that was working a jack
just got off working a jackhammer arms. Okay, his mother
cut his hair with a with a spoon and it
was a bowl. And he and now it's time to
(18:28):
go out and and be like John Travolta in Saturday
Night Fever. And so I'm gonna I'm gonna have a
low cut shirt on. You're gonna see my chest, hair,
my one hundred thousand dollars worth of chains. You know,
you're not gonna know I'm a jackhammer guy. You're gonna
think that like I'm the dance king. Then I'm gonna
walk in there with my whole silk outfit on. That
was Pete. That was Pete. And and you knew like
(18:49):
when he got on the bus, when he got on
the airplane, and it wasn't just the hit king. He
was the king of the room like he and that's
how he had to be. But once once you he
settled that now we can just be we could be boys.
We can we can hang out and stuff
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