TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/071089/07108900.055

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 3.8 KB | 76 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 21

Living Life by the Numbers


    For 26 seasons, no one has been depressed to know that
there was a baseball player who lived his life according to the
numbers, who kept statistics in so many categories that he
seemed to be a portrait of a ballplayer painted by the numbers.
On the contrary, the calculations of Pete Rose have been central
to his charm. Who else remembers ordering room service in 1963,
and that it was $12.75?

    On the last day of Rose's first season, the great Stan
Musial squirted a final pair of singles, one to each side of
Cincinnati's rookie second baseman, and retired. For 18 years
Rose deplored those bouncing balls as two hits he might not have
needed to pass Musial. He thinks that's normal: "How hard is it
to remember you had 170 hits your first year and 139 your
second, which is only 309 your first two years, when you've had
ten 200-hit years and are averaging 198 hits a season for 20
years?" Furthermore: "If you have some 70 hits against Phil
Niekro, and some 40 hits against Joe Niekro, is it twisted to
be aware that you have over 100 hits -- one-fortieth of all your
hits -- against Mrs. Niekro's sons, and to wish she'd had more
children? Doesn't everyone know how much money they have in the
bank?"

    Of course, money is a significant statistic, and Rose's
famous ambition was to become the "first $100,000 singles
hitter." His original minor-league salary was $400 a month. For
being the National League's rookie of the year in 1963, he
received a $5,000 raise that brought his annual pay to $12,500.
Twenty years later, he was earning $10,000 a game.

    Rose's father was a banker, a numbers man who always seemed
to be hunched over a column of figures. He was also a semipro
football player who competed into middle age for the old
Cincinnati Bengals. "When I was young," the son recalls, "people
would stop me on the street to tell me I could never be what my
father was."

    One uncle signed him. Another uncle, who worked in the
Reds' clubhouse, had outfitted Rose for several sweet years of
sideline catches. But when Rose came back at 22 to dislodge
second baseman Don Blasingame, he was shunned by Blasingame's
buddies. Familiar with cold shoulders, the black players took
him in. Frank Robinson remembers, "Nobody had to show Pete how
to hit, but they wouldn't even show him how to be a major
leaguer. So we did."

    Rose made himself the star of the team and, in company with
Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench and Tony Perez, turned the mid-'70s
into a golden age. Their habit was to rag each other and
everyone else at the batting cage, a merciless system that
worked for them but ruined some humbler talents. If a wittier
but lesser player tried to hold his own, they would trumpet
their salaries in unison. It was another way of keeping score.

    To those close enough to see it, Rose's greed for numbers
was softened by small generosities -- All-Star rings arranged
for clubhouse men. Of course, there was his abiding love of
baseball. Naturally, he can recount every tick in the seesawing
sixth World Series game of 1975, won on a twelfth-inning homer
by Boston's Carlton Fisk: 3-0, 3-3, 5-3, 6-3, 6-6, 7-6. During
and after it, Rose called that game the best he ever knew, the
one he almost didn't mind losing. Only in the past few days
could that possibly bring a sneer.

    Gambling goes with being a throwback. In 1985, on the eve
of his record 4,192nd hit, Rose entertained the press with
speakeasy stories bootlegged from the old Yankee Waite Hoyt. "I
wish I could have met the Big Guy," Rose said, meaning Al
Capone. "Wouldn't he have to give you a tip on a horse or
something?" At the time nobody thought that was anything but
delightful.