Pete Rose is 80 today, and the world shakes a little. Maybe not your world, if you’re under 50 and never saw him play live. But some of the rest of us are twitching slightly.
Rose was, and remains, a very big kid. Playing baseball and signing autographs aren’t real-life jobs, no matter how dedicated one might be to each. Having very little responsibility to anyone but Self is more or less a child’s trait, yeah? Pete has been pretty good at that, too.
And, of course, there is the Era of Denial that was Pete’s existence for well over a decade. The laws of Actions and Consequences weren’t part of Rose’s life then.
I don’t say this to come down on the Hit King on his 80th birthday, but to suggest it seems impossible he’s 80 years old. Some people aren’t meant to get old, even chronologically.
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I wonder today how many friends are regaling him on his 80th. Real friends, not hangers-on and/or bobos who do his bidding. I wonder if his family members are dialing his number and singing Happy Birthday when he answers.
For all his fame, infamy, scorn, popularity and Q score, I never thought Pete had a lot of good friends. Joe Morgan, maybe, for a time. He and Johnny Bench were never all that close. Arnie Metz has been his loyal helper for decades. I don’t know how much of Arnie’s loyalty is reciprocated.
By the time you’re 80, maybe you’ve done all the deep reflecting and introspecting you’re going to do. Seems to me that sort of thinking happens at 50, maybe 60. By 80, what’s done is done. Besides, Pete’s not an introspective guy to begin with.
If I’m Pete, I’m wondering what it all means.
That’s heavy, Doc. When did you get your Psychology degree?
He’s the Hit King. It’s likely his 4,256 will never be topped. No one will play as long or as well again. Think about it: To beat Pete, someone would need to average 213 hits a year for 20 years. Single-season records in baseball will be broken. Those requiring longevity, probably not.
Is that all there is?
He’s been exiled by his peers, who don’t want him in Cooperstown. He can’t work in the game he loves. With every passing day, his relevance dims a little more. His Pete-ness has cachet around here, always. Elsewhere?
For three decades, his life has been signing autographs. He sits behind a folding table, in a folding chair, head down, right hand and fingers working furiously. Moving folks through a line quickly means Rose can’t shake hands, offer a smile or do anything but sign “Pete Rose’’ once every couple seconds.
I’ve never heard he has been associated with a charity or a cause.
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Who can he call on to talk about his life? To unburden himself. Who’d understand his successes and his regrets? Who’d listen as Pete took stock of Pete? If he ever wanted to do that, which I’m guessing he doesn’t.
You can hold one of the greatest records in sports, but if you don’t have much else, what does it mean?
We’re all defined by the choices we make. Happy 80th birthday, Peter Edward. I hope that today, you are remembered.
Now, then. . .
Ketel Marte, Tim Anderson, Eloy Jiménez, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Kevin Kiermaier, James Paxton, Miguel Cabrera, Cody Bellinger, FERNANDO FREAKING TATIS JR. Add in Mike Soroka, Sixto Sánchez, Kyle Lewis, George Springer, Zac Gallen and you’ve got what could be a shortlist of All-Star contenders or potential profile subjects. Instead, it’s a tour of players who have either hit the injured list already or are still out after sustaining spring training injuries or suffered recent setbacks. (Yahoo! Sports)
Has depth ever been more important in Baseball?
Will 2021 come to be know as the Season of Attrition?
Are the Reds poised to benefit and endure?
In the outfield, certainly. They could lose a Winker or Senzel and not be traumatized. Naquin is this year’s Dietrich, Akiyama will be back soon.
Anywhere else?
Not starting pitching, unless you’re comforted by the thought of Tejay Antone replacing Castillo or Gray for any length of time. (And, maybe, you would be. The guy can deal. But he’s a neophyte.)
The deep depth is a year away at least: Greene and Lodolo. As for position players, who? If India goes down or slumps terribly, then what?
ELIMINATE REPLAY. . . It’s bad enough in any sport, when play is stopped for several minutes for a review. It’s worse when it’s stopped and they still get the call wrong.
It’s happened a couple times in Baseball in the past week. The last thing the National Passed Time needs is another means of slowing itself down. It’s like filling the starting blocks with quicksand, for the Olympic 100-meter finals.
Bleacher Report: In fairness, just last year MLB opened a new replay operations center while also dramatically improving its video coverage. There are now 4K cameras with views of home plate, plus twice as many isolated cameras. There's also a greater availability of high-frame-rate video.
And they still screw up. If I’m gonna wait around 2-3-4 minutes in the middle of a game that’s already defined by waiting around, I expect the results of the waiting around to be infallible.
Once more: Humans play the games, humans coach the games, humans officiate the games. Humans make mistakes. It’s OK. Somehow, MLB flourished for a century without replay. It’s possible that could occur again.
Praise the OG. The OG be praised.
I CAN’T LET THIS GO. Cool story from The Athletic about the Blue Jays extended stay at their spring training home in Dunedin, FL. They’re there because COVID continues to complicate border crossings between Canada and the US. They’ll stay until the weather gets problematic, then they’ll likely move to Buffalo, where they played home games last year.
Every cold-weather team should consider this: Home games in FL and AZ until at least mid-April. Unless you really like hanging out at GASP on April 1, when gametime temp is as likely as not to be 39 degrees, where it was this year.
Dunedin has a nice downtown and it’s near world-class beaches. Tampa is close. And it won’t be 39 there on April 1.
Gotta wrap this one up early, Mobsters. I’m actually interviewing a real-live human being in person at noon.
TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . One of those rare tunes I could play every day for the rest of my life. . .
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