The Legacy of Pete Rose is Complicated and Conflicting

I’ll never forget the moment I realized just how much Cincinnati Reds fans loved Pete Rose. Walking with my dad toward Great American Ball Park one summer day, I passed a T-shirt vendor selling red t-shirts with white font that read, “I’m with Pete. Give me $200 on the Reds.”

We laughed, and as I walked into the ballpark that day, I remember thinking it had been so many years since Pete was around, and those shirts were still being sold. 

I was a kid then and didn’t really understand the depth of Pete Rose and his story. As I got older, I began to understand that Rose wasn’t just being held out of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and any job in MLB because he placed some wagers. I learned that Pete gambled constantly, lied about it repeatedly, and even told Bud Selig that he did it because he didn’t think he’d get caught. 

It was at this point that I started to get angry. See, I was born in 1995. I wasn’t around for the Big Red Machine. I never saw Pete Rose play. I had never witnessed the head first slide or the record breaking hit that happened 10 years before I was around. 

Yet I saw how beloved Pete was by everyone in this city and by Reds fans all across the world. I wondered how they could love him so much, when he embarrassed the organization so badly with this scandal. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t get more blame from the fans. It didn’t make sense to me. 

How could someone who famously said he’d walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball, knowingly and willingly jeopardize its integrity by betting on games? 

That seemed hypocritical to me. I no longer felt sorry for Rose. I felt sad that a beloved Cincinnati son had brought such shame to the game and embarrassed a franchise that he was so instrumental in turning into a machine.

For years, working in sports talk radio, I’d roll my eyes whenever the topic of Pete Rose was brought up. Without a shadow of a doubt, he deserves to be in Cooperstown. He was one of the truly greatest players the game had ever seen, and he did it with determination, dependability, and a remarkable ability to hit.