https://x.com/AP/status/1839656008748089400?t=E11-vpqssrE-krrE7N1_1g&s=19
Thatâs a bummer.
This one is a tragedy.
Yeah, this oneâs a little rough on me. I really enjoyed his style.
I liked him in the Blade movies. We was a great musician, too.
Amazing guy.
Interesting guy
Brave guy.
Eclectic guy.
Intelligent guy (Rhodes Scholar)
Kind Guy
Yikes!!! While Iâm not a huge fan of straight Country/Western, he never quite fit into that mold, but rather wrote and sang a variety of music. He was a talented songwriter, many of whose compositions people remember mostly as being recorded by other artists.
He had a very successful film career (Iâm mostly familiar with the stuff from the 70âs-80âs).
Iâll always remember him as the man who wrote two of my favorited tunes:
Mercedes Benz
Me and Bobby McGee
both wonderfully covered by Janis Joplin.
Quack quack! RIP Kris
Dikembe Mutumbo, from brain cancer at 58
I just saw that. I was shocked. I had no clue that he had been unwell.
His finger wagging after blocked shots is among the greatest examples of âtrash talkâ in sports history. Loved his style!
I remember a story from one of his teammates at Georgetown that was said on the Jim Rome Show.
âAfter winning the Big East championship, they had a big party off campus with the team. Everyone was drinking and enjoying the company of the women who were invited to the party. Well, Dikembe showed up about two hours into the party drunk. He comes through the door and shouts âWho will sex Mutumbo?â Well his declaration scared the women so bad they started heading for the door fast. It was the fastest party empty out in the history of Georgetown.â
Iâm sure they were all wagging their fingers as they went out the door.
Wow, Pete Rose age 83
Itâs too bad that after such a GOAT career as a hitter he will be remembered as someone âcaught betting on games,â but those are the choices he made.
Exactly. I didnât like him as a player, but respected his ability as much as anyone ever. (I think I never forgave him for leveling Ray Fosse in the All Star game and shortening Fosseâs career as a result.) Whenever I hear apologists for his gambling ban I donât get it. He knew the rules and the consequences. He took the risk and got what he deserved.
Iâm with you there. Something about it just seemedâŚunnecessarily brutal. I never saw Rose the same way again after that.
Here is the essay from the great Joe Posnanski about Rose. I was a very very big Cincy fan growing up (to stick it to my older brother who is a Dodger fan), and I have actually met Pete and got an autograph, but more as a direct human thing and not the way you usually got a signature from him. Deep down I loved Pete for giving my joy in my teenhood winning so much, and still to this day have a bit of a warmth towards him that wasnât really earned once I learned about the type of person he really was. That said, this piece by Posnanski really explains who Pete Rose was.
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A dozen or so people texted me the news at almost exactly the same time, the news of Pete Roseâs passing at age 83, and thereâs something odd that stays with me. Just about every one of them, both his fans and his haters, added words to this effect: âI thought heâd live forever.â
I did, too. It makes no sense at all. He certainly didnât live a life geared toward longevity. But, yeah, I was like everybody else. I kind of thought Pete Rose would live forever.
A Pete Rose story: Thirty years ago, I was sent down to Florida to find Pete Rose. He wasnât hard to find. He was sitting exactly where you would expect him to be sittingâat the now-defunct Pete Rose Ballpark Cafe in Boca Raton.
This was on the five-year anniversary of his banishment from baseball, and his people had discouraged me from coming. They insisted forcefully that he would not be talking to anybody on this solemn occasion, much less a kid reporter heâd only met once. So I sat a respectful distance away and wrote down a few thoughts while watching the most voracious hitter of our time or any time gnaw on a sandwichâŚ
âGo talk to him,â my server said, after bringing over a Diet Coke.
âWell, Iâm told he doesnât want to talk,â I replied. She began laughing.
âThatâs Pete,â she said. âHe ALWAYS wants to talk.â
So I walked over to Pete Rose with a notepad, and before I could even introduce myself, he kicked out the chair next to him and said, âHave a seat.â
And for the next three hours, he talked and talked and talked, mixing legends and lies, stories and fury, jokes and bitterness, memories and grievances.
âI like my life,â he said.
âI belong in the Hall of Fame,â he said.
âI never bet on baseball,â he insisted.
âI played the game the right way,â he repeated again and again and again.
First, he was Little Pete. His father, Harry Rose, was âBig Pete.â There was no one on the West side of Cincinnati tougher than Big Pete. He spent his days working for Fifth Third Bank, but spent his weekends cracking heads on sandlot football fields around town. Everybody told stories about Big Pete. He played against people 20 years younger when he was in his 40s. He once played a game with a broken leg. An opponent once crowed before a game that he would be the one to finally retire Big Pete. It was the last game that guy ever played in.
Big Pete raised his son to be a baseball player⌠and not just any ballplayer. He would be a ballplayer like Big Peteâs hero, the ferocious Enos Slaughter, who, it was said, played baseball the way that George Patton played war. When Pete Rose was 8 years old, his father approached his Knothole League coach with a deal:
âYou have to promise to let my son switch-hit,â Big Pete said. âEvery time.â
And in exchange? Well, in exchange, Little Pete would play his heart out on every single play in every practice and every game⌠and that meant every game. He would never miss one. âWeâll even leave him here on vacation,â Big Pete promised.
As a rookie with the Reds in â63, Rose wore No. 27, before switching to 14.(Cincinnati Reds Hall Of Fame)
The coach let him switch-hit, and Little Pete played his heart out, and he didnât stop for the next 40 years. He cracked more hits than anyone ever had. He ran out his walks, stretched singles into doubles, stretched doubles into triples, and all the while he dove headfirst into bases. âLook at Charlie Hustle over there,â Mickey Mantle once said, mockingly, when Little Pete took a spring training game as seriously as if it were Game 7, and Pete loved that name, loved it so much that he made it his nickname, made it his identity. Charlie Hustle, yes, that was exactly right.
âBefore the All-Star Game, he came into the clubhouse and took off his shoes,â Henry Aaron said. âThey ran another mile without him."
No, Pete Rose never really figured out the rest. The women, the gambling, the lies, the addictions, the self-destructive tendencies, all of that was just how he filled the blank spaces when he couldnât be on the diamond playing baseball.
On that diamond, though, he was The Hit King.
On that diamond, he was exactly the man Big Pete wanted him to be.
A Pete Rose story: We were at a shop called âThe Field of Dreams,â in Caesars Palace, Las Vegas. He was sitting behind a table, and outside, a couple of the storeâs carnival barkers shouted at the passing tourists, âStep right up! Meet the Hit King! This is your chance to meet Pete Rose.â Traffic was light. He was at The Field of Dreams signing autographs just about every day.
Pete passed the time with stories and trivia questions and dirty jokes. They werenât terribly dirty jokes⌠more like naughty jokes, the sort 12-year-olds tell each other in the barracks at summer camp.
âAnd I said, âIs that in Tennsylvania?â
âPing pong balls? I thought you said King Kong balls.â
âDid you hear about the Breederâs Cup?â Rose asked. âI bet on it, and Steve Garvey won it.â
Rose got the absolute most out of his ability. (John Iacono /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
After he unloaded one of the punch lines, he would lose himself entirely in laughter. His face would go red. His body would convulse. You know, like a 12-year-old who just told a naughty joke in the barracks at summer camp.
âIâm the best deal in Las Vegas,â he said suddenly. âI mean, look, you can spend $100 to go see Celine Dion sing. But will she come out and shake your hand? Will Bette Midler put her arm around you and have a photo taken with you? Can you ask her questions? I got people asking me the damndest questions you ever heard. And Iâll give âem an answer every time. Iâll answer anything. Go ahead. Ask me anything.â
I asked him how he felt being in baseball limbo.
âIâm the best deal in Las Vegas,â he said again.
The numbers are staggering. Game played: 3,562. Record. Plate appearances: 15,890. Record. Times on base: 5,929. Record. And, most of all, there are all those hits, 4,256 of them, a numerical marvel.
The first half of the hit total, 42, is Jackie Robinsonâs uniform number.
The second half of the hit total, 56, is Joe DiMaggioâs unbeatable hit streak.
âGuess what,â Pete Rose told me. âNobodyâs breaking that record. Nobody. The first three thousand hits are easy. Baseballâs an easy game to play when youâre 100 percent. But try getting those hits when youâre old, when your batâs slow, when your back hurts.⌠Nobodyâs ever breaking that hit record. Mark that down. You ask somebody in 100 years who holds the hit record, and theyâll tell you: Pete Rose with 4,256 hits.â
This was not just what he told me, not just what he told others, but itâs what he told himself. They could take away the Hall of Fame. They could take away his right to manage baseball games. They could keep him away from the ballpark, which is the only place where he really felt at home.
But, hell no, they couldnât erase 4,256 any more than they could erase the Sistine Chapel or Hamlet or Chuck Berry performing âJohnny B. Goode.â That was his lifeâs work, his immortal contribution to the world, and it would live on; it had to live on, for as long as pitchers pitched and hitters hit and fans ate hot dogs at the ballpark.
When Joe Morgan joined the Reds in 1972, he and Rose became inseparable friendsâRoseâs teammates, with only the rarest exceptions, adored himâand the thing that Morgan simply couldnât comprehend was how badly Pete Rose needed hits. If Rose had two hits in a game, he needed three. If he had three, he needed four. If he had four, even if the game was well in hand, Rose still hungered for that fifth hit like a lion that had not eaten for weeks.
Thatâs what 4,256 representedâday after day after day of hunger.
âThere werenât many players I knew who felt what I felt,â Frank Robinson said. âBaseball wasnât just a game to me. Thatâs what I saw in Pete when I first met him. He was still a kid then. But baseball wasnât just a game to him.â
A Pete Rose story: At some point, Pete Rose realized he could make a few bucks by signing baseballs with the line, âIâm sorry I bet on baseball.â
Over the years, heâd sign anything that could make him a few bucks. He signed the mugshot taken when he served time for tax evasion. He signed copies of the Dowd Report, which led directly to his expulsion from baseball. He signed betting slips, he signed photos of the time he crashed into Ray Fosse in the All-Star Game, he even signed newspaper articles detailing the many unsavory things he did in his life, including an allegation that when he was in his 30s, he had a sexual relationship with a woman before she turned 16. In court, Rose acknowledged the relationship. His defense was that he believed she was 16.
But it was the request for âapology balls,â as Roseâs inner circle began to call them, that followed Rose wherever he went. People were willing to pay for Roseâs scribbled admission, and so, a few times every day, someone on his team would yell out, âHey, Pete, we need another apology ball.â
Then, instinctively, he would grab a baseball, and he would print, in all capital letters, âIâM SORRY I BET ON BASEBALL,â between the seams.
On eBay right now, there are dozens of such baseballs for sale, and also bats and hats and jerseys and baseball cards with those words on them. Pete Rose wrote the words âIâm sorry I bet on baseball,â hundreds of times in his life, a real-life Bart Simpson reflexively writing his penance on chalkboards for all to see.
But was Pete Rose actually sorry?
[Baseball] was everything to me,â Rose once said. âMaybe that was my problem.â (Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)
âI donât know what more I can do or say to convince people of that,â he said. âI respected the game. I respected the game more than anybody. I lived for the game. It was all I thought about, all I dreamed about. It was everything to me. Maybe that was my problem. Maybe that was the reason I did what I did. When I was finished as a ballplayer. I needed more.â
And just then, someone shouted, âHey Pete, we need an apology ball.â
He picked up a baseball. He wrote the words. Introspection was never Pete Roseâs racket. He began talking about steroids and how that is real cheating.
How do you sum up the 83-year life of Pete Rose? The answer, alas, is that you canât. People who love him will see one life. People who loathe him will see another. At just about every public event I have done over the last 15 years, Iâve asked a question: âShould Pete Rose be in the Hall of Fame?â
Almost exactly half the hands in the crowd shoot up in the air. Every time.
Almost exactly half the hands in the crowd stay down. Every time.
He did not get into the Hall of Fame while he was alive. He probably never will.
But Pete Rose, the ballplayer, did the greatest thing imaginable: He got the absolute most out of his ability. What more can you ask of anybody in any field? Rose was not 6 feet tall. He was not fast. He did not have natural power or a natural defensive position. He was not graceful. He did not have a strong arm. All he had was a good eye, an indestructible body, and a quenchless thirst.
And yet, he outhit Cobb.
And yet, he scored more runs than Mays.
And yet, he played more baseball games than Aaron.
And yet, he totaled just one fewer base than Babe Ruth.
And yet, he led the Big Red Machine, perhaps the greatest of all teams.
And yetâŚ
âIâm the biggest winner in the history of sports,â Pete Rose said. âThink about that. Itâs safe to say baseball players play more games than any other sport. And Iâm the all-time leader in games won. That has got to mean something, doesnât it? That has got to mean something.â
I would say Ichiro Suzuki, who had 4,367 hits, 3,089 in MLB and 1,278 in the Nippon Professional Baseball league.