Pete Rose died Monday, on the last day of baseball’s regular season, a season which began with a gambling scandal uncomfortably close to Shohei Ohtani, the generational talent who had one of the most marvelous seasons ever. Ohtani’s play brought joy, something Rose denied fans over the last 35 years.
It must have brought some grudging comfort to Rose, who was 83, to have lived long enough to see professional sports make its (lucrative) peace with gambling. He died in Las Vegas, where the National Football League staged the high holy days of the Super Bowl this year, and where he had set up a tawdry (but lucrative) post-baseball career in hawking his autograph. Nicknamed “Charlie Hustle” for the intensity of his play, at the end Rose was just a hustler, pure and simple. It was terribly sad.
Rose, the leading hitter in major league history, was thrown out of baseball in 1989 for betting on the game. Gambling is legal now, but baseball does not allow its own players, managers and staff to bet on their own sport (like other professional sports). Major League Baseball, after the 1919 game-fixing scandal at the World Series, has the most severe penalties. Bet on baseball and you’re out. Rose bet on his own team and was banished from the game. As a consequence, he was not admitted to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, despite his outstanding career.
The results of MLB’s investigation in 1989 — the Dowd Report, which Rose did not contest — resulted in commissioner Bart Giamatti, only months on the job, forcing Rose into a settlement where he accepted banishment from the game. Giamatti, a literature professor who had been president of Yale University, died suddenly just eight days after expelling Rose. Heavy smoking likely caused the fatal heart attack, but those of a more poetic bent, like Giamatti himself, were convinced that he died of a broken heart; his heart, which loved baseball, could not bear the perfidy of the game’s greatest hitter.
Giammati’s heart was spared the subsequent years of lies Rose would tell, until he finally confessed to baseball’s cardinal sin. Giammati, who must have read the Dowd Report with tears in his eyes, never had to behold the spectacle of Rose autographing copies of it. There was no depth to which Rose was not willing to sink if the price was right, and Rose’s price was very low indeed.
The spectre of gambling returned to baseball before the season opened this year. Baseball’s current greatest player, Ohtani — who pitches and hits like Babe Ruth did — signed the largest contract in sports history with the Los Angeles Dodgers, $700 million over 10 years, last December. Only a few months later, it emerged that he had paid millions to an unlicensed bookie to cover the gambling debts of his interpreter (Ohtani, who is Japanese, does not do interviews in English). Baseball held its breath. Could Ohtani be banished?
The case was resolved quickly. Investigators agreed that Ohtani did not know about the gambling or the debts, and the payments were actually a theft, a betrayal by his (now fired) assistant.
That dealt with, Ohtani then had one of the most magical seasons ever.
Recovering from elbow surgery meant that Ohtani would not pitch this year, but only hit and run the bases. One of the rarer achievements in baseball is to hit home runs and steal bases. The strength and size required to hit for power usually means less speed for stealing bases. Only a half dozen players have ever hit 40 home runs and stolen 40 bases in a single season. Ohtani joined the 40-40 club, and then weeks later, created his own 50-50 club. He would finish with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases. Simply astonishing.
For good measure, he came just three hits shy of another rare feat, the Triple Crown. He led the National League in home runs and runs batted in (RBI) by a wide margin, and was a close second in batting average. Three more hits and he would have been the first NL Triple Crown winner in 87 years. It was arguably the greatest offensive season ever.
The manner of his mastery enhanced the magnificence of the achievement. Ohtani plays with a grace, an elegance in his movements, even as he overpowers opponents. He is polite, greeting his opponents and the umpire respectfully at the beginning of each game. It is a generalization to say that the Japanese have better manners than Americans and Canadians, but it is true. For a sport where spitting should have a statistical category of its own, he has been spotted cleaning up the clubhouse.
His inability to do interviews in English means that his translated remarks are almost wholly about gratitude, respect and kind sentiments. There is no trash-talking, no vulgarities, no surliness, no resentment. Baseball might consider making all players use interpreters, even those who speak English.
Rose’s baseball crime was betting on his own games. But even worse were his offences against the ethos of a game that he genuinely loved. In retirement he made it cheap and crass, his bundle of lies and resentments sucking the joy out of the game. Ohtani brought joy in abundance. When he set his 50-50 milestone in an opposing ballpark, the fans there stood and cheered and felt good about baseball and better about life.
Rose may in death find the peace that eluded him so often in life. And baseball, as it always does, brings forth a new star, lighting up the major leagues from the land of the Rising Sun.
National Post