Originally Posted by Rain Man:
I like that he embraced his apology so strongly in his later years.
I don't care at all about baseball so I never really learned about the betting thing. I just remember that one of my best friends was an avid baseball fan and he despised Pete Rose for one little thing. He said that whenever Pete made the last out of the inning as a fielder, he would throw the ball on the ground before running back to the dugout. So some ball boy or whoever would have to run out to the field and pick the ball up between innings. It annoyed the heck out of my friend because he deemed it so rude.
You loved it if you liked the Reds/Phillies. I hated him during the 80's World Series as a Philly vs. the Royals. I hated when he spiked the ball at 1st after the last out of the inning. However, hell of a hitter/player and always always hustled. RIP [Reply]
Originally Posted by IowaHawkeyeChief:
However, hell of a hitter/player and always always hustled. RIP
He's such a complicated figure.
Between the lines, he's the model ballplayer you want to teach young players to emulate. He was baseball smart, knew as much about the game as anyone and maximized every ounce of baseball ability he had. All heart and guts.
Off the field, he was a dirtball and made stupid decisions.
It's a tragedy because he had so much more give to baseball but his lifetime ban meant he couldn't even work with minor league players or get invited to a spring training camp. [Reply]
Originally Posted by scho63:
The greatest travesty in all sports is he is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame with an asterisk or black box around his profile.
Bart Giamatti can rot in hell. Worthless college douchenozzle.
You're a great poster Scho, but I couldn't disagree with you more on this post. [Reply]
Man, this is the biggest crybaby pussy ass RIP thread ever. Some of you are simply pathetic whinny babies talking about shit when he played 40 years ago. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Ocotillo:
He's such a complicated figure.
Between the lines, he's the model ballplayer you want to teach young players to emulate. He was baseball smart, knew as much about the game as anyone and maximized every ounce of baseball ability he had. All heart and guts.
Off the field, he was a dirtball and made stupid decisions.
It's a tragedy because he had so much more give to baseball but his lifetime ban meant he couldn't even work with minor league players or get invited to a spring training camp.
He was an overrated try-hard who's quest for the hits record made the teams he played on worse for the last decade of his career. And he occupied an offense first position at 1b for all of that where he couldn't field worth a damn AND provided C caliber offense from the dead bottom of the defensive spectrum.
His everything he did after his first Reds stint was a farce. He should've retired then.
As for teaching minor leaguers - He'd have been the guy teaching dudes to chop wood and other silly shit like that. He'd have been out of the game by 94 and then spent the next 20 years on every morning radio show bitching about how the game has changed. Because he was a stubborn ass who never had a shred of humility.
The cult following of Pete Rose has never made a drop of sense to me. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
He was an overrated try-hard who's quest for the hits record made the teams he played on worse for the last decade of his career. And he occupied an offense first position at 1b for all of that where he couldn't field worth a damn AND provided C caliber offense from the dead bottom of the defensive spectrum.
His everything he did after his first Reds stint was a farce. He should've retired then.
As for teaching minor leaguers - He'd have been the guy teaching dudes to chop wood and other silly shit like that. He'd have been out of the game by 94 and then spent the next 20 years on every morning radio show bitching about how the game has changed. Because he was a stubborn ass who never had a shred of humility.
The cult following of Pete Rose has never made a drop of sense to me.
WTF? You're usually spot on. You whiffed big time here. Your lack of respect in this instance, speaks more about you than it does for Rose. Much respect for you, but not with this take. Chill and move along. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
He was an overrated try-hard who's quest for the hits record made the teams he played on worse for the last decade of his career. And he occupied an offense first position at 1b for all of that where he couldn't field worth a damn AND provided C caliber offense from the dead bottom of the defensive spectrum.
His everything he did after his first Reds stint was a farce. He should've retired then.
As for teaching minor leaguers - He'd have been the guy teaching dudes to chop wood and other silly shit like that. He'd have been out of the game by 94 and then spent the next 20 years on every morning radio show bitching about how the game has changed. Because he was a stubborn ass who never had a shred of humility.
The cult following of Pete Rose has never made a drop of sense to me.
To be fair, Rose being kept on when his skills had diminished wasn't on him so much as the teams that employed him. A good chunk of professional athletes are egomaniac pricks, and an egomaniac prick isn't going to quit when he's on the cusp of breaking a massively important record like that. I'm not sure why you'd expect him to. Remember how useless that cocksucker McGwire was in his last season? I didn't blame him for wanting to play. Of course he wants to play. I blamed LaRussa for not benching him.
As I've said in the past when this topic came up, I'm not a Rose fan, or a Reds fan, and I think the guy was a total ass. But he was a total ass who holds the all-time hits record, and that just is what it is. He didn't cheat to get those hits. [Reply]