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This is not a vendetta against the irascible genius who batted .367 over 24 seasons, though relative merits are always debatable (see box). Rose has decided "you couldn't be that bad a guy and get 4,191 hits." And he has known all along "you can't compare Honus Wagner and Ty Cobb with Peter Rose and (Boston's .349-batting) Wade Boggs. I respect all of the old-timers. They did what they had to do against the competition they had to play against. The travel was better in those days; the surfaces are better today. But if you start arguing dead balls and bad gloves, spitballs and relief pitchers, nobody can win." All the same, he had to put in a word for speedy "black outfielders," none of whom were allowed to confound Cobb. "Willie Mays and Bobby Bonds were chasing my stuff down," Rose reminded. In a telephone call ) that much entertained the press box, a deskman back at one newspaper had a question: "Is he saying black people run faster than white people?" Stop the presses.
Unlike Ruth-chaser Roger Maris and others under journalistic seige, Rose kept both his hair and humor. The two-a-day press conferences, better attended than some State of the Union messages, raised issues as profound as the soup du jour at Flanigan's on Second Street, hereafter to be known as Pete Rose Way. "I knew chicken noodle was on Tuesday," he said significantly. But that night an 0-for-4 showing got him away from the specials (asparagus) and back to the basics (vegetable). Ron Robinson, a raw Reds pitcher who last spring had fretted that he wouldn't make it back from the minors for Rose's moment, whacked his first major-league hit on Tuesday. The game was halted, and Robinson was given the ball.
Inexhaustibly, Rose softened everyone's wait by spinning old baseball tales, some of them set in speakeasies. Like the time in Chicago when a number of the Yankees, conversing too loudly about the "Big Guy," momentarily found themselves in the company of Al Capone. "If you want an autograph from the Big Guy," they were advised, "don't go inside your pocket for a pen." Wistfully, Rose wished he could meet the Big Guy. "He'd have to give you a tip on a horse or something, wouldn't he?"
Modern baseball players acquainted with Little Big Guys shared the week's news columns. Rose's warm moment was a distraction and counterbalance to the drug scandal, though redemption goes too far. During the Pittsburgh trial, Rose's name was tossed around loosely when one of those informed reformers, certainly not reformed informers, ran out of fresh cocaine and started throwing stale amphetamines. Except to say that he didn't think much of the proceedings, Rose resisted efforts to stretch a single into a symbol.
Afterward he contended, "I'm not smart enough to really have the words to describe my feelings." But he is wise enough to know when a picture needs no caption, such as the tableau of the two Roses and the endless cycle that survives even plagues. "He's a good boy," Rose said. "Nobody's going to get mad at him if he can't get 2,000, 3,000 hits." He shot Petey a sharp look. "But you better." Rose did not stop at recruiting his son to chase after him. When the Padres' Tony Gwynn, 25, reached first base in the late innings, Rose apprised Gwynn that he, too, was good enough to shoot for 3,000 or | 4,000 hits. As Pete says, "That's easy, getting 3,000. What the hell?"