When Pete Left Cincinnati
Pete Rose leaves for Philadelphia in early 1979
When Pete Left Cincinnati
In Esquire’s preview of the 1979 season, Bill James had this to say about the Cincinnati Reds:
If you’ve ever played OOTP or Football Manager, you know this problem well. You get some good players, they hit their prime, you win some championships, and now you’re stuck with them for their decline phases.
And, yeah, that did apply to Pete Rose, even though we don’t like to believe it.
Rose was 37 years old in 1978. He had a good season, hitting .302 with a handful of home runs, 50 or so RBIs, and did well enough at third base and in the outfield. He was an All Star yet again, and finished 11th in the MVP voting.
He had 3.4 WAR that year, which isn’t superb. Pete only drew 62 walks, which was a little bit low by his standards. Still, he was a positive player on a team that was actually pretty good. The Reds finished only 2 1/2 games behind the Dodgers in 1978, after all.
But that wasn’t good enough for management. Out went Sparky Anderson — and Pete Rose was left to swim in the free agent market.
Even outside Cincinnati, this was a pretty unpopular decision:
Now, Rose was a huge name in baseball in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. I can’t stress this enough. If you go back and watch baseball — or heck, football — game from anytime from about 1975 through something like 1985, you’ll see something involving Pete Rose. This guy was the original superstar, the Reggie Jackson before Reggie Jackson was Reggie Jackson.
Pete’s free agency decision was huge news. And, when Pete decided to go to Philadelphia, he was all over the sports section:
In fact, forget the sports section. He was the big story on page one:
Now, I don’t want to imply that Rose was like Ruth — but the truth is that Rose received more press when he signed with the Phillies at age 37 than Ruth did when he signed with the Boston Braves at age 39:
You see — in the newspaper world, someone’s always resigning. Someone’s always making some sort of controversial decision. Someone’s always on strike, or messing with the economy, or setting up a tariff, or whatever.
But it’s not every day that Babe Ruth signs for your team. Or Pete Rose, for that matter.
I like this post, as it led me to think of my youth. As someone born in 1971, who grew up playing ball at a legitimate sandlot, I remember friends and people in the community would often imitate Rose, or talk about him. And yes, you'd see him on t.v. often outside of the game. For whatever reason, I just wasn't one to pretend to be like him when playing, or caring much if I cracked open a pack of Topps and found a Rose. I'm not sure why, but I didn't like the Reds nor Phillies as a kid. But come to think of it, I can't think of many players in the last 50 years to get that kind of attention. Mike Schmidt didn't, nor Brett, outside of the Summer of 80, and Nolan Ryan certainly didn't, until later in his career. Interesting to think about.
1978 was the summer Pete Rose came within 12 games of tying Joe DiMaggio’s consecutive hit record. Then in Pete’s 2nd year in Philadelphia, the Phillies reached their first World Series since 1950 and actually won it. Sure enough he made a memorable rescue of the catcher’s dropped pop foul to help win Game 6 in the clutch. I couldn’t stand a single thing about his “running” to first on a walk or sliding headfirst, but greatness is greatness and can’t be denied.