5,000 Damn Hits
By
Amanda
Posted at 6:31 pm
On Monday, Pete Rose appeared on Late Show with David Letterman. When Letterman asked Rose whether he used performance-enhancing drugs during his playing years, Rose responded with a dignified, “I had too much respect for the game and for my body for that. I know I could have extended my career, but to me, it just didn't seem right.”
Oh, wait, no, that wasn't Rose. Rose's quote was “If I took steroids, I'd have gotten 5,000 damn hits.”
If you're sick of watching the Cards wallop the Padres, you could take a minute to read this AP story via The Enquirer about the appearance. It even goes on to explain that he recently signed a bunch of “I'm sorry I bet on baseball” baseballs to get them on the market at the same time as a bunch of other “I'm sorry I bet on baseball” baseballs that he'd signed previously that a collector was auctioning off. As opposed to because it was--you know--a sincere sentiment.
i suppose you can have negative feelings about pete if you haven’t been a reds fan all your life, but there’s a reason pete was voted hometown hero. i wouldn’t go around bashing pete. he is a baseball god to true reds fans.
I haven’t really got much feelings about Pete either way. I do stand in awe of his ability to be a public relations nightmare, though. I guess he’s a guy who doesn’t do anything halfway.
Bash away, Mama. I have a Rose auto’d ball circa ’77. I have 300 plus cards in plastic preserved sleeves. I have at least three autobiographies. I played against little Pete for years growing up. I knew right where he lived in Indian Hill when it all went down. And I probably have 8-10 hand recorded audiotapes of his appearances on WLW’s SportsTalk back in the day.
I grew older, started a family and moved on. I wish Pete the best, but the status quo is the way it’s gonna be til the end of time.
We’re all better off pimping the validity of Larkin’s HOF credentials.
Like I said before… Idon’t care if a guy is nice, polite, politically correct, good looking, or whether he keeps appointments or promises. I want guys that win at all costs and run through walls for you… and that was Pete Rose. That’s why we won back to back world series with him as team captain.
I don’t see anyone questioning Pete’s credentials as a player. I’m just pointing out that he’s acting like a jackass these days.
Should being good at your job in your prime exempt you from people pointing out that you’re obnoxious later? ‘Cuz I’m a hell of a technical writer now, and if that means I’m going to be able to loudly pass gas in public after I retire, I might just start adding more fiber to my diet.
Pete was a great player, but has always been a waste of air, as a human being. I worshipped the guy – cried myself to sleep when his hit streak was broken – but wouldn’t cross the street to meet him now.
By the way, he did admit to using greenies on Letterman, but in his typical half-assed way (he claimed they were diet pills, and he only used them to lose weight).
To be honest, if you are watching TV these days you deserve to be offended… seriously, what they pass of as “entertainment” is typically thinly disguised propaganda or just blatant crap designed to bring the collective IQ lower so that we allow the perpetration of political crime.
I used to be called a conspiracy theorist, but you know what, I have been proven right in just about everyone of my political rants in recent memory. We, as a species, are being led down the path of slaughter for profit. Pete Rose is the least of our problems. He is a victim like everyone else, and maybe that is his function to you and me… if he can willingly commmit suicide by gambling like he does, something is seriously wrong with our society.
i really do wish he would shut up. (i hope my comment was taken the right way – i just realized i should have added some more because it just sounds weird.) i’m just tired of the whole country bashing him all the time and regurgitating these stories – it’s a symptom of our culture of vengence. the guy made a grave mistake, and people want him to pay forever for it.
he makes his living selling merchandise – he can’t do anything else. he’s not the brightest bulb on the tree, and baseball was his life. when they took it away from him, he had nothing left. frankly, i believe that he is sorry he bet on baseball. he’s just not savvy enough to know what is tasteless. michael would not like him.
i wish people would just leave him alone. letterman only had him on the show because he knew pete would say something stupid that could be made fun of.
does that make more sense?
I’ll contribute my $0.02 worth on Pete, since I was a Reds fan even before he was with the team for the world championships in ’75 and ’76.
There is no way anyone will ever convince me that Pete was not one of the greatest ever to play the game. In many ways you have to have watched Pete play the game day in and day out to truly appreciate what a special player he was. I did, and I do.
Off the field, perhaps he has his faults. I’m okay with that. I’m not perfect either. I will say, though, that I *would* cross the street to meet Pete Rose. In a heartbeat. I wouldn’t ask for his autograph. I wouldn’t ask him for anything at all. But I’d love to be able to shake his hand and thank him for the memories of the many special things he did as a player while I was growing up as a Reds fan in the 60’s and 70’s.
HMZ
Oh! Time for sharing pennies! Fun!
I loved Pete Rose as a kid. He [i]was[/i] the Reds for my childhood, as I followed the team in the late ’80s. I’ll always remember Marty calling his record-breaking hit and how the game just stopped as a congratulatory ceremony took over the baseball field. (I always thought it was funny that they didn’t do the same thing for his next hit, since it, too broke the record.)
Then the gambling thing broke, and I really couldn’t understand what was going on. Now I can see he just wasn’t a very smart man and got caught up with the wrong crowd.
Still, it doesn’t make it any easier to see him continue to throw the remainder of his life and the Cincinnati public’s goodwill away.
He was a great baseball player–the kind I like the most. Little talent, but boundless energy, constantly running at top speed and never giving up. It’s why I enjoy Ryan Freel so much. Such a good player.
Too bad he’s just a lousy, disgusting excuse for a person.