Bill Cunningham, the Great American. Of course, Tuesday afternoon, the Tri State weather continues to be iffy. Later on thinks you're a little bit better than the Great Bay the weekend.
But until then, the news of yesterday at Pete Rose is passing at the age of eighty three, continues to reverberate throughout the Tri State good memories and for some bad memories, the upside downs, and the definitive work on Pete Rose that I read, which is the best book ever written as Charlie Hustle, The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose in the Last Glory Days of Baseball, written by Keith O'Brien who's from our community. And Keith O'Brien,
welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show. And first of all, Keith O'Brien. Before we got onto the last hours of Pete Rose's life, who was Pete Rose?
No, Pete Rose is like a roar shock test for baseball fans, for Americans. You can find whatever story you want in him.
You know, he.
Is, of course a local hero and a baseball icon who did get the most out of his talents and did scrape and claw his way to the mountaintop. He is also a player who sabotaged himself again and again and again with his own choices, his own decisions, his own addictions. Frankly, Bill and and I think that this tangle of lessons, this complicated legacy, is how ultimately he
will be remembered. I you know, I think Pete Rose is in the end a cautionary tale for us all and and and and it's really you know, how I began to think about him as I was writing the book. I I began to think of his story as a Greek tragedy that just happened to play out in and around an American baseball field. And and that, ultimately, and sadly, is is what he is. I think he's a tragic figure.
Let's talk about the beginnings of Pete Rose at Boldface Park and elsewhere, talk about his relate. Many times, a boy or a father's relationship is the key element of one's life. I know it's colored many elements of my life. And that is tell me about Pete's relationship with his dad.
Yeah, so big. Pete, as he was known Harry Francis Rose, was the original star athlete in the Rose family. He was a prominent semi pro football player on the West Side of Cincinnati in the nineteen thirties, forties, even into the nineteen fifties, at a time when there was no
professional football in Cincinnati, no Cincinnati Bengals whatsoever. This was as far as Big Pete could go, these workaday games on the weekends with other West Side guys, where by the way, the players often wagered on the outcome in the parking lot of the game. But from the moment Little Pete is born in nineteen forty one, the father is absolutely fixated on the future athletic success of his
firstborn son, and he will push Pete. And you know, I did get a chance for my book to interview Pete Rose for twenty seven hours, both on the phone and in person, and of course we talked about his father, and his father's been gone for fifty four years, but he still spoke about him with reverence and still credited him Pete did for his success. And I think that's notable because Big Pete was a difficult man. He was not an easy man. He was certainly not easy on
his son. But Little Pete did not reject the gospel of Big Pete Rose. He embraced it and he wanted to please him.
Or the destructive tendencies of Pete Rose in his adult life, or the currentoernals of that born in Pete's relationship with Harry.
I think it was certainly born on the West Side. You know, Gambling was part of the culture in the Anderson Ferry neighborhood where Pete Rose grew up in the nineteen forties and fifties. Just down the hill from Pete Rose's home on Braddock Street was a little tavern where men would gather to wager on dice games and card games. The kids themselves, including young Pete Rose, often wagered outside the walls of that tavern, you know, pitching pennies against
the wall. And you know, I do think it's notable Bill that, aside from pushing his son to be great at sports, there was one other thing that Big Pete loved, and that was going to River Downs. And you know, again, I did those many hours of interviews with Pete ro and one thing he told me that I think he's just so stunning. He said that his favorite memories of his childhood was not playing baseball bull Based Park, not
playing football or baseball at Western Hills High School. His favorite memories, Pete said, was going to river Downs with his dad on the weekend and cheering on his daddy's horse to win. And I just think that is so so interesting.
So somehow, and I can recall specifically and writing in Lachlan as a kid and a bar and I watched the old the fathers from World War two who had their cards and it was for amusement purposes only. He had a one teamer, at two teamer, a three teamer, bet five bucks, bet ten bucks. There was something about the addictive personality of Pete Rose that the kernels of his ultimate destruction came from river downs and from betting and bars, which he learned from his father.
And you know, his gambling was well known in Cincinnati in the nineteen sixties and seventies. No one, least of all the media or the Cincinnati Reds should have been caught by surprise by the revelations in the nineteen eighties that you know in my reporting, you know, I scoured the newspapers for every mention of Pete Rose. And one story I think is so interesting. In the late nineteen sixties, Pete has won one batting title. He's about to win
his seconds. There were complaints letters that people were sending in to the Cincinnati Reds because they were seeing Pete Rose so often at river Downs, even before games, that it concerned people. And Rose, you know, openly admitted that he liked to gamble, and he he and he frankly stuck his finger in the eye of those complained about it. He said in one newspaper article that I found you know, what do people want me to do? Stay home and the grass.
Keith O'Brien, author of Charlie Hustle. It was at least I watched the gambling at his home on bloom He had three TV sets set up on a Sunday afternoon and he'd behead the gold sheet Jim Feist reports, et cetera.
I went with him to Latonia to bet on horse racing, and he kept from us many of the dark aspects of his life betting on baseball, because when all this arose in the spring of nineteen eighty nine, he enlisted me and Bob Trumpy and many others to defend him vociferously, and he kept feeding us information as Hawaii elements the Dout report were inaccurate and I went on the air and Bob Trump, he went on the air repeatedly defending Pete Rose against these allegations that he was betting on
baseball as a player and a manager, which of course he did. And you talk about the sixties and seventies. I did not have a relationship with him then because I was too young. But nonetheless was his behavior of your precipitating factor. So why the Redgs did not re sign him in seventy eight and let him move on to the Phillies. Then the expos.
Based on my reporting one hundred percent, Yes, you know, nineteen seventy eight, Pete's going to become a free agent effectively for the first time. You know, he's reaching the end of his career. Many people speculated in nineteen seventy eight that he only had a couple of years left. Of course, he's going to play for eight more years, but at the time they thought he just had a couple of years left. And and many people wondered why Rose didn't come back. And here's the reality of the situation.
The president of the Cincinnati Reds by nineteen seventy eight was Dick Wagner. Dick Wagner and Pete Rose had never seen eye to eye. They were different men, cut from different cloths. Wagner was a bit of a Puritan and a bit of a of a militant, you know. P Rose was p Rose, and so they didn't get along.
But sometime that season Bill in the spring of nineteen seventy eight, based on my reporting, there is some sort of secret meeting in the office of Dick Wagner, And at that meeting is Dick Wagner, Pete Rose, and the head of security for Major League Baseball. And the discussion that day in the spring of nineteen seventy eight is about Pete's gambling, his bookies and his many debts to
these bookies. Baseball and the Reds were worried then, and so without question, Wagner was concerned about bringing Rose back, as it would leak later in nineteen eighty nine, Wagner said apparently that he was worried that someone a bookie who had been stiffed by Pete Rose, might come searching for his money and take measures that would leave a stain on the Cincinnati Reds franchise.
When he left for the Phillies in seventy nine, I would point out he won another World championship with them, was the fact that Cincinnati Reds in fact rejected Pete Rose was out. A motivating factor in his later success with the Phillies none the exposed and then back with the Reds was the fact that he was shunned by the Reds at that point. A motivating factor in baseball for Pete like.
All great athletes. And again, whether you like him or you don't like him, whether you cheered for him in the end or didn't, you know, Pete Rose was a great athlete. And like all great athletes, you know, the Michael Jordans, the Tiger Woods, the Tom Brady's of the world, he found motivation in the little things. And it did hurt him that the Reds didn't want him back. He would have happily signed for the right amount of money
a contract with the Cincinnati Reds. And so yeah, he goes to Philadelphia intent on proving that he's still Pete Rose, He's still a great player. And you know, you know, last couple of years in Philly, you know, eighty two eighty three, we start to see the downturn, But seventy nine, eighty one, he is still putting up, you know, Hall of Fame caliber numbers.
Nanny comes back on. You remember he was wearing the stupid Montreal Expos uniform and I think it was hit number four thousand at the Riverfront and he belly first goes into third base. The crowd goes absolutely nuts. And I went into the exposed locker room after the game and I talked to him briefly, and he told me I want to come back home. I said, I know. And the next year, March Shot brought him back home. Explain how March Shot brought Pete Rose back to Cincinnati.
Well, so you know, it happens in August nineteen eighty four. Shot is not yet owner, but she is making noise and being quite loud among the ownership. She had been pushing for years to bring back the old guard Reds, the Morgans, the Perezes, the Pete Roses. And in July of that summer summer of nineteen eighty four, Dick Wagner has now been fired. And who's back in charge of the Reds. The old general manager who did love Pete Rose, Bob Hausem. And you know, listen, I think Bob Hausm
should be in the Hall of fame. He was the architect of the big Red machine. I think it is a travesty that he is not in Cooperstown. But Bob Housem made excuses for Pete Rose, as did a lot of people in the Cincinnati Reds organization in the nineteen seventies and eighties, and Hausam makes that trade that brings Rose back. Initially, in the early discussions, Housm did not want Rose to be a quote player manager. He just
wanted him to be manager. But as he pointed out, Bill Pete had now crossed over the four thousand hit milestone. He's like one hundred and fifty hits away from breaking the all time record. There's no way he's stopping now. And so he basically bends Housen's arm into being a player manager. And you know, this is a sliding doors moment for me, because when Pete comes back to Cincinnati, he really gets wrapped up in sort of Cincinnati's underworld at that time. And you know, I think, also his
addictions are getting worse than all of this. His return to Cincinnati, his connections in the underworld, his own addictions set him up to the ultimate failure. In the late nineteen eighties.
Kind of like a alcoholic taking a job as a bartender. He found himself back in the circumstance where he could not restrain his addictions. What addictions did Pete Rose have?
Well, I think without question he was adicted to gambling. You know, he himself would have denied that. And in fact, only on two occasions did Pete ever admit he had some kind of addiction. But in both situations he was trying to save himself. The first time he'd admitted he had an addiction was in nineteen ninety when he was facing a sentence scene for federal tax evasion, and the second time was in that self serving, shallow memoir that he wrote in two thousand and four, you know, trying
to get himself reinstated back into baseball. Other than that, you know, he always said that he was not addicted to gambling. But you know, I did interviews with everybody in his inner circle in the nineteen seventies and eighties, three different men who placed Roses bets on baseball, and in all of them agreed that Pete was horribly addicted to gambling at the time. And it makes sense, you know, because you know, people always say well, why would he do that? Why would he break this rule that he
would have known would get him banned for life? Well, I think the fact of the matter is he knew it and he couldn't stop. He couldn't stop himself because he was addicted to gambling. And that's not to minimize his decisions, but I do think that is the case.
The book is Charlie Hustle, The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose in the Last Glory Days of Baseball by Keith O'Brien, and there's no better treaties. If you want to know the truth about Pete Rose, the good, the bad, and the ugly, it's contained in that book. And Keith O'Brien, I could spend hours and hours with you. We've only scratched the surface. But if you're continue to be interested as a listener and a fan, you have to get
the book and it lays it all out. New York Times bestseller Keith O'Brien, and Keith's so many more stories, so little time in life. And I know that Pete's closest friends now are remembering the good times and not the bad. I think the good times often live after to remand the bad times need to be buried, and your book says it all and does it all, and you do it with class. Keith O'Brien, once again, thank you for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show.
Keith, thank you, thanks for having me.
Bill. All right, let's continue, all right, My comments coming up next, plus later on more about Pete Rose's rise and fall here in Cincinnati at your home of the Reds, the Home of Pete Rose. News Radio seven hundred WLW