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‘Play Hungry’ Review: Charlie Hustle in Extra Innings
Of his collision with Bud Harrelson in the 1973 playoffs, Pete Rose says simply: “I did what I always did.” The modern game he finds sanitized and dull.
By Roger Lowenstein
May 30, 2019 / Wall Street Journal
Pete Rose was banished from professional baseball 30 years ago—the same number of years he spent in the game itself, where he set the record for most hits and most games played and earned a reputation for fierce competitiveness. “Play Hungry,” his memoir, amounts to an eloquent plea for reinstatement.
Mr. Baseball says, finally, that he was wrong to bet on baseball games and apologizes—“I’m truly sorry.” While he regrets that he broke the rules, he still seems not to grasp why betting on his own team, as he did, is prohibited.
But “Play Hungry” is not a book about gambling; nor is it a work of self-reflection. And its eloquence is of the locker-room variety. Cliche, vulgarity and slang abound. Mr. Rose recalls that being dropped from high-school football left him feeling “colder than a witch’s t—” because, he says, he was “brung up” to hate losing. He probably leads the league in double negatives and writes without irony: “I didn’t have no education.”
PLAY HUNGRY
By Pete Rose
Penguin Press, 290 pages, $28
It is one of his two regrets, along with betting. But he is expressive about the sport he loves and about the father who raised him to strive to win. He evokes the baseball of a simpler time. There are no sabermetrics here, no fancy stats. Mr. Rose’s route to the top (he won three batting crowns and played for three World Series champions) was unflinching devotion and hard work. It was all in the details: backhanding a grounder hit to the right of the second baseman’s spot or pivoting to turn a double play. He likens his craft to playing the violin. “Repetition was the key to mastery.”
Because he was not a natural star, the most compelling sections of “Play Hungry” are those that document his rise. His father, Harry Francis Rose, also known as Pete, was a local legend in Cincinnati as a boxer and footballer. Little Pete idolized his father and says with pride, “I was an exact replica of my dad.” The elder Rose, a bookkeeper by profession, seems to have regarded Pete’s boyhood as mere preparation for an athletic career. The Roses didn’t take vacations, because Pete was playing ball. His father assured the boy’s coach: “My son will never miss a practice.”
The father nurtured in Pete his hustling style. He taught him to run to first even on a walk, a trademark that later prompted a crack about “Charlie Hustle” from the Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford but impressed his teammates. When the ball is hit, his father said, everyone on the field should be moving. After a win, father and son would stop for a bite on the way home, but not if his team lost.
Although the elder Rose’s competitive drive might seem overbearing, Pete didn’t seem to mind. His dad, he says in a flight of near-poetry, “passed on something deep and private and urgent, a kind of ornery hunger never to be satisfied with anything but giving your all.”
Mr. Rose’s description of life in the minors—starting in the lowly Class D league farm team of his hometown Cincinnati Reds—recalls a bygone innocence. He flew to Geneva, N.Y., two days after his high-school graduation. He remembers his wonder during his maiden flight, scarcely believing he was “up there in that thing.” When he landed, he headed straight to the ballpark.
There is an authentic, Huck Finn-ish charm to these passages. Baseball was not the slick slugfest of today. Players bore colorful nicknames, they played day games, and they played hurt. It was a game of knockdowns and spitballs and—a feat at which Mr. Rose excelled—stretching singles into doubles. Through much of his three-year minor-league career, Mr. Rose was not considered a serious prospect for the majors, due to his small size (he matured late). But his aggressiveness prompted a second look. In 1963 the Reds manager, Fred Hutchinson, made a calculated gamble and benched an established veteran to go with Mr. Rose.
His style was controversial. He slid into bases hard, roughing up opposing infielders and catchers. Writing of his collision with Mets shortstop Bud Harrelson in the 1973 playoffs, which incited a brawl and nearly a riot among angry New York fans, Mr. Rose says simply: “I did what I always did” to break up a double play. He doesn’t admire the modern game, which he finds sanitized and dull.
Above all, “Play Hungry” testifies to the dividends paid by desire, not just to Mr. Rose but to the teammates he inspired with the will to win. None of this qualifies Mr. Rose for sainthood, but it’s worth pointing out that his focus on winning led him to judge his teammates solely by their abilities. Early in his tenure with the Reds, the veteran white players shunned the young Mr. Rose as cocky and brash. He gravitated toward the black players, who he sensed were outsiders like himself. He was happy to shine Frank Robinson’s shoes, he says, just to hear Robby’s baseball wisdom. And Robinson took him to school: “Frank knew that when he talked baseball, I always listened.”
Management shamefully ordered Mr. Rose to stop fraternizing with his black teammates; he refused. Even a half-century later, the memory of “whites only” rest-room signs in the South elicits his outrage. His fury wasn’t political, it was personal. As he puts it: “I just couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing with those signs.” It reminds us of the upside of a life devoted to winning. At its best, ambition seeks out merit; it is blind to favor or prejudice.
No one will confuse Pete Rose with a paragon of morality, not after all his deception about gambling. But the sport misses the authenticity of his voice, and the Hall of Fame—barred to him on account of his banishment—can hardly be complete absent such an immense talent. After 30 years, baseball should think about bringing him home.
Mr. Lowenstein’s latest book is “America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve.”
Of his collision with Bud Harrelson in the 1973 playoffs, Pete Rose says simply: “I did what I always did.” The modern game he finds sanitized and dull.
By Roger Lowenstein
May 30, 2019 / Wall Street Journal
Pete Rose was banished from professional baseball 30 years ago—the same number of years he spent in the game itself, where he set the record for most hits and most games played and earned a reputation for fierce competitiveness. “Play Hungry,” his memoir, amounts to an eloquent plea for reinstatement.
Mr. Baseball says, finally, that he was wrong to bet on baseball games and apologizes—“I’m truly sorry.” While he regrets that he broke the rules, he still seems not to grasp why betting on his own team, as he did, is prohibited.
But “Play Hungry” is not a book about gambling; nor is it a work of self-reflection. And its eloquence is of the locker-room variety. Cliche, vulgarity and slang abound. Mr. Rose recalls that being dropped from high-school football left him feeling “colder than a witch’s t—” because, he says, he was “brung up” to hate losing. He probably leads the league in double negatives and writes without irony: “I didn’t have no education.”
PLAY HUNGRY
By Pete Rose
Penguin Press, 290 pages, $28
It is one of his two regrets, along with betting. But he is expressive about the sport he loves and about the father who raised him to strive to win. He evokes the baseball of a simpler time. There are no sabermetrics here, no fancy stats. Mr. Rose’s route to the top (he won three batting crowns and played for three World Series champions) was unflinching devotion and hard work. It was all in the details: backhanding a grounder hit to the right of the second baseman’s spot or pivoting to turn a double play. He likens his craft to playing the violin. “Repetition was the key to mastery.”
Because he was not a natural star, the most compelling sections of “Play Hungry” are those that document his rise. His father, Harry Francis Rose, also known as Pete, was a local legend in Cincinnati as a boxer and footballer. Little Pete idolized his father and says with pride, “I was an exact replica of my dad.” The elder Rose, a bookkeeper by profession, seems to have regarded Pete’s boyhood as mere preparation for an athletic career. The Roses didn’t take vacations, because Pete was playing ball. His father assured the boy’s coach: “My son will never miss a practice.”
The father nurtured in Pete his hustling style. He taught him to run to first even on a walk, a trademark that later prompted a crack about “Charlie Hustle” from the Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford but impressed his teammates. When the ball is hit, his father said, everyone on the field should be moving. After a win, father and son would stop for a bite on the way home, but not if his team lost.
Although the elder Rose’s competitive drive might seem overbearing, Pete didn’t seem to mind. His dad, he says in a flight of near-poetry, “passed on something deep and private and urgent, a kind of ornery hunger never to be satisfied with anything but giving your all.”
Mr. Rose’s description of life in the minors—starting in the lowly Class D league farm team of his hometown Cincinnati Reds—recalls a bygone innocence. He flew to Geneva, N.Y., two days after his high-school graduation. He remembers his wonder during his maiden flight, scarcely believing he was “up there in that thing.” When he landed, he headed straight to the ballpark.
There is an authentic, Huck Finn-ish charm to these passages. Baseball was not the slick slugfest of today. Players bore colorful nicknames, they played day games, and they played hurt. It was a game of knockdowns and spitballs and—a feat at which Mr. Rose excelled—stretching singles into doubles. Through much of his three-year minor-league career, Mr. Rose was not considered a serious prospect for the majors, due to his small size (he matured late). But his aggressiveness prompted a second look. In 1963 the Reds manager, Fred Hutchinson, made a calculated gamble and benched an established veteran to go with Mr. Rose.
His style was controversial. He slid into bases hard, roughing up opposing infielders and catchers. Writing of his collision with Mets shortstop Bud Harrelson in the 1973 playoffs, which incited a brawl and nearly a riot among angry New York fans, Mr. Rose says simply: “I did what I always did” to break up a double play. He doesn’t admire the modern game, which he finds sanitized and dull.
Above all, “Play Hungry” testifies to the dividends paid by desire, not just to Mr. Rose but to the teammates he inspired with the will to win. None of this qualifies Mr. Rose for sainthood, but it’s worth pointing out that his focus on winning led him to judge his teammates solely by their abilities. Early in his tenure with the Reds, the veteran white players shunned the young Mr. Rose as cocky and brash. He gravitated toward the black players, who he sensed were outsiders like himself. He was happy to shine Frank Robinson’s shoes, he says, just to hear Robby’s baseball wisdom. And Robinson took him to school: “Frank knew that when he talked baseball, I always listened.”
Management shamefully ordered Mr. Rose to stop fraternizing with his black teammates; he refused. Even a half-century later, the memory of “whites only” rest-room signs in the South elicits his outrage. His fury wasn’t political, it was personal. As he puts it: “I just couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing with those signs.” It reminds us of the upside of a life devoted to winning. At its best, ambition seeks out merit; it is blind to favor or prejudice.
No one will confuse Pete Rose with a paragon of morality, not after all his deception about gambling. But the sport misses the authenticity of his voice, and the Hall of Fame—barred to him on account of his banishment—can hardly be complete absent such an immense talent. After 30 years, baseball should think about bringing him home.
Mr. Lowenstein’s latest book is “America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve.”
