When Pete Rose finally overtook Ty Cobb, emotion at last overcame Rose. For several minutes after a back pounding from teammates, opponents and even the umpires, he was left alone at first base. Then the base itself was removed, confiscated for posterity, and he was lost. "That's the first time I was ever on a baseball field," Rose thought later, "when I didn't know what to do." He "was doing all right," as he put it, "until I looked up and started thinking of my family." Particularly his father, who died in 1970. "I saw him up there, and right behind him was Cobb. Right behind him. Regardless of what you think, Ty is up there."
As the ovation swelled last Wednesday, everyone in Cincinnati's brimming ball park felt close to Rose, but only First Base Coach Tommy Helms was nearby. A quarter of a century ago, Helms and Rose were minor-league roommates, partners in mischief, who both became Rookies of the Year in the National League. A temporal way of fixing Rose's career is to remember that Helms actually followed him to that eminence by three seasons but has already beaten him to pasture by eight. Displaying tenderness publicly for the first time maybe in 44 years, the great roughneck laid his head on Helms' shoulder and cried, bringing Petey Rose out of the Reds' dugout on the run. His bat-boy uniform has had to be let out a few times in the twelve years since Petey was three. As they wrapped their arms around each other, the father seemed the child.
It was a cool, coming-of-autumn evening on the Ohio River. At Rose's every motion, the flashes from the instant cameras made a light show. Enough newsmen joined the "Rose Watch" to prompt the youngest Cincinnati players to ask their manager in hushed voices, "Is this what a World Series is like?" Rose grinned and nodded. A few days before in Chicago, a left-handed Cubs pitcher wrecked his shoulder in a bicycle accident, and for several hours the city of Cincinnati was listed in critical condition. Throughout his 23rd season, Rose has played himself routinely against right-handers. So, starting after all in the final game of the Chicago series, he slapped two hits to equal Cobb's storied 4,191, and very nearly a third. For a man with a home-attendance clause in his contract (almost six bits a ticket after 1.5 million), this is the definition of integrity. Though Rose had said, "I have a way of things always turning out right for me," nobody caught the suggestion that he was on the brink of two wonders, the other one timing.
Fifty-seven years to the day since Cobb pinch-hit and popped up in his final major-league at bat, Rose stroked a clean single to left center on a 2-1 slider from Eric Show in the first inning of a 2-0 victory over the San Diego Padres. "You missed a good ball game tonight," Rose told President Reagan over the phone. For some reason, Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and National League President Chub Feeney missed it too. Not only did Rose score both runs and make a defensive dive for the final out, but unbelievably in the seventh inning, he duplicated his inaugural 1963 triple off Pittsburgh's Bob Friend, an identical shot into the left-field corner. Could Rose be starting over? "In total bases, I'm right on Babe Ruth's heels now," he said, meaning 116 behind. "And I've got a chance to catch Cobb in runs (103 to go)."