'The Pain Killed Me, But I Got My Hits'
Even in the year of the pitcher, a broken thumb couldn't stop Cincinnati's Pete Rose
By John Devaney
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Pete Rose spun around first base, watching the drive loop down the leftfield line. The Giant leftfielder, Ollie Brown, charged toward the ball, glove stabbing at air. The ball glanced off Brown's outstretched glove and bounded away. Rose took off for second base.
Brown picked up the ball and threw. Rose slid. Hal Lanier grabbed the throw and slapped the ball on Rose but the umpire signaled safe.
Rose stood up, dust billowing around him, brushing sand off his pants. The chin was set in that grim look he was when he is collecting base hits, the eyes glittering with satisfaction now that he owned another one. What pieces-of-eight were to Captain Kidd, base hits are to Pete Rose. He counts base hits, agonizes over base hits that got away, calculates how he can get more base hits. A day without a base hit, for Pete Rose, is like a day without the sunshine: gloom and misery everywhere.
The double off Brown's was Pete's fifth hit in five at bats in this
game against the Giants late last season. As Pete stood at second,
Giant shortstop Hal Lanier walked by him, the ball still stuck in
his glove. "That's amazing," Lanier said to no one in particular.
"What's that?" said Rose.
"One guy is five for five and other guy if four for four."
Rose looked at him. 'What other guy?' he thought. Does he mean Vada Pinson? Vada had hit three straight times in this game, but the last time up he had made out.
"No," said Rose. "Vada's no four for four. He's three for four."
"I don't mean Vada," said Lanier. "I mean Matty."
Rose grinned. He was sure Lanier was kidding him. Pete and Matty Alou, on the last weekend of the season, were dueling down the stretch for the National League batting championship, only a couple of percentage points apart. Matty was playing for the Pirates in Chicago. Could he have gone four for four?
He sure could. "When I got back to the dugout," Rose says now, "the guys told me about it. They had heard it on the radio buy they didn't want to tell me about it."
And so the stage was set for the most dramatic confrontation of the NL season, a season that had no pennant race as the Cardinals ran away from everybody. On this next-to-the-last day of the season, Pete had knocked out five hits in five at bats, Matty four hits in four at bats. Pete was hitting .335, Matty .333, and the batting championship would be won or lost on the season's final day.
For Pete Rose, coming this close to a batting title had meant a battle over bad luck and pain, a battle that most anyone except Pete Rose would have lost. On July 6th, diving for a fly ball - Pete is always diving for fly balls - Pete fractured his left thumb. The accident happened in Los Angeled and Pete was examined by Dodger physician Dr. Robert Kerlan. "An injury like this," said Dr. Kerlan, "would keep most athletes out of action for five weeks. But knowing Rose, I'd say he'll be out only three weeks."
Even if he were out only three weeks, he'd miss at least 16 games. Switch-hitting Pete could hardly expect to reach the goal he sets for himself every spring - the goal of 200 base hits in a season. He had clipped 209 base hits in a season, the most majors, in 1965 and 205 base hits in 1966. In 1967 he dived - what else? - for a fly ball and hurt a shoulder, missed much of a month and collected only 176 hits.
(If you think 200 hits isn't too high a goal, look up how many American League hitters owned 200 hits last season. The answer: None. "Over in that league," says Pete with a slight sneer, "they win batting titles with 170 hits." Last year Carl Yastzremski won with 162.)
"I didn't dress for eighteen days after I was hurt," Pete remembers, telling the story in the enthusiastic way he has that got him the nickname Charlie Hustle, "I didn't even go to the ball park except to see the games. I couldn't take batting practice, do nothing. The club was home for fourteen of the eighteen days.
"Then we went on a road trip - first to Pittsburgh for a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, then to New York for a Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I was on the 21-day disabled list and the Saturday in New York was the 21st day. On that day I could be taken off the list.
"What Dave Bristol has in mind was taking me to Pittsburgh to start
working out, then after the Sunday game in New York sending me back
to Cincinnati for X rays. He figured I might be ready to play when
the team came back to Cincinnati on Wednesday. 
"The first day we were in Pittsburgh, I started playing a pepper game. I started swinging righthanded, you know, and I thought: I can swing! My thumb didn't hurt. I stared swinging harder and harder.
"The next day-this was now Thursday in Pittsburgh - I took batting practice and I was hitting the ball hard, you know, and I was really surprised. I talked to Dave and I said, 'Why don't you let me go back to Cincinnati tomorrow and see the doctor? Then maybe I can rejoin the team in New York on Saturday and that's the day I come off the disabled list.'
"Dave said, 'Well, OK, what have we got to lose?' I went back to Cincinnati and I saw the doc on a Friday afternoon at the hospital. He said, 'Well, the thumb is still broken, but I don't think you can reinjure it doing the natural things in baseball like catching and hitting.'
"He gave me a bat, made a sponge to protect my thumb, and had me swing the bat against the wall. The impact didn't hurt at all. 'Well,' he said, 'if your batting eye is good, I don't see why you cant's play.'
"I went back to New York that Saturday morning - the day I came off the disabled list - and I told Bristol what the doc had said. Dave said, 'OK, you're there tonight.'"
And so just 21 days after the injury, as Dr. Kerlan had predicted, Pete Rose had come back to play. The thumb was still swollen, so thick he had to cut his glove to fit the thumb into the glove. "It hurt when I caught the ball." Said Pete. "But, heck, what was I going to do? I can't make any money sitting on the bench."
The Saturday night Don Cardwell was pitching for the Mets against the Reds. "Up to that day," says Pete, I hadn't taken any batting practice at all lefthanded for twenty-one days. And you know now hard Cardwell throws."
Batting lefthanded against the right-handed Cardwell, Rose went nothing for four. But as he says, "I hit two balls pretty good." The next day he batted against Tom Seaver and got two hits in four at bats. "The next day," he says, and there is pride in his voice, "I went to Philadelphia and I got six hits in a doubleheader. So you got to figure, with the two hits in New York there are eight hits I wouldn't have gotten if I'd waited to play when the team got back to Cincinnati."
The thumb was swollen for most of the next two weeks. "Every once in a while," says Pete, "they jammed me and the pain killed me, you know, when I hit the ball off my fists. But I got my hits. I started bunting when they jammed me. I got a lot of base hits bunting last season, at least ten to twelve bunt base hits.
"Everyone figured I didn't have a chance to get 200 hits. I'd missed sixteen games. But I had a good month in August. I got fifty-five hits in August and that's what did it."
Pete got 210 hits in the 1968 season, tying Felipe Alou of Atlanta for the league lead. But by the last week of the season, Pete and "the little Alou," Matty, were only two or three percentage points apart in the race for the batting title. "You know an interesting statistic," says Pete, that base-hit computer whirring in his brain. "Matty went 36 hits for 84 at bats against out ball club last season. If he gets thirty-six hits against the other nine clubs, he gets 324 hits for the season. That shows you what a year he had against our pitching.
"It drives you nuts out there in the outfield when a guy you're battling for a title in getting all those hits against your team. You'd rather he get them someplace where you can't see the hits. What was worse, I must have hit around .230 against his team."
On the last week of the season the Reds went to Pittsburgh for a three-game series. "In the last game of the series," remembers Pete, "I went nothing for four and he went nothing for four. After that game I was .332 and he was .331."
As Pete left the field he hollered to Matty, "Good luck for the rest of the season and have a good winter."
Matty grinned. Later he told a reported: "Please go over to the Reds' clubhouse and tell Pete I wish him the same thing."
The Reds returned to Cincinnati for a three-game set against the Giants that would end the season. In the first game, a 15-inning affair, Pete got one hit in seven attempts. After the game his pal, Tommy Helms, tried to get Pete out of the doldrums by snapping. "You're swinging like a girl."
"I couldn't figure out what was wrong," says Pete now. "All that week I have been hitting the ball good in batting practice. Usually when I'm hitting the ball good in practice I'm hitting the ball good in games. But I hadn't been hitting good at all in Pittsburgh or in the first game against the Giants."
After that game Bristol call Pete aside. "Why don't you come out early and take extra hitting?"
The next morning Pete arrived at the ballpark at 10 o'clock and took hitting practice for 25 minutes. Pitching that day for the Giants was Gaylord Perry, always tough for Pete. "You know what he throws," Pete says with a glower. "He has that secret pitch of his." Pete won't say what the secret pitch is, but he hints darkly that it is a spitter.
The first time up, Pete smacked a double. The next time up, another hit. And another hit. And a fourth hit. And then the fifth hit, his second double of the day. "It was just one of those days," says Pete. "It was unbelievable. I hit every one of them on the nose. I felt that if I came up to bat fifty times, I would have got fifty hits. The night before, I felt it I'd come up fifty times I would have got just one hit. As Perry said later on the air, the harder he threw, the harder I hit him.
It was just a completely opposite feeling from what I'd had in the game the night before. I guess it was tension, and maybe the extra hitting got rid of the tension, but I didn't feel any tension. If I had, I would have taken extra hitting earlier in the week."
"There was a tremendous amount of pressure on Pete," says Bristol. "He had never been in that position before and Alou had. Matty has won the title two years earlier."
After getting that fifth hit, Pete learned that Matty was four for four against the Cubs in Chicago. "I would have been in trouble," says Pete with a laugh, "if I had to play a night game that night. Imagine going into the game knowing Matty had gone four for four."
After the perfect day for each, Pete was hitting .335 and Matty .333. "That night," says Pete, "I went to a football game to watch the University of Cincinnati. When I got home I did some figuring on a piece of paper. I figure even if I do my worst - I go nothing for four - and he does goes one for four or two for four, I'd still beat him out by a couple tenths of a percentage point."
The next day, batting against Ray Sadecki, Pete made sure he wouldn't
do his worst. The first time up, he hit a double. When he trotted
out to right field, the big crowd of 27,000 gave him an ovation.
A pal stationed in the bleachers, a radio stuck to his ear, yelled
to Pete: "Alou is nothing for one." All through the game the pal
kept Pete informed on what was going on in Chicago. "Matty is nothing
for two!" 
"Matty is nothing for three!"
Pete Smiled.
Pete finished the game one for three. When he got to the clubhouse the Pirate-Chicago game was still going on, but Pete now knew that Alou was nothing for four. Even a hit for Alou on his fifth time up wouldn't catch Pete.
"I was rooting for him to get a hit that would drive in a few runs," says Pete. "The hit wouldn't be enough to catch me, but we wanted the Pirates to beat the Cubs. If the Cubs lost, we would have tied them for third place."
Matty never did get a fifth at bat, the Cubs won and the Reds finished fourth - but Pete wad won his first batting championship with a .335 average, three points higher than Alou.
He won that championship while learning to make the long throws from rightfield. Last spring Bristol shifted him from left to right after trading away Tommy Harper. Pete did well at the new position, making only three errors and tying for the league lead in assists. "I won a couple of ball games," he says, "with throws that got the runner at home plate."
Moving about a baseball diamond is old stuff to Pete. He started out as a second baseman, was shifted to third, then back to second, the to left field, then to right, and this spring may move to center to replace the departed Vada Pinson. It will be his fifth new position in five years. "I hope I can play centerfield," says Pete. "You're in charge out these when you play center."
Pete always has been a take-charge guy, even when he was "little Pete Rose" to a lot of people in Cincinnati, where he grew up. As a 150-pound scatback for Western Hills High School, Pete dizzied tacklers with his evasive speed. He also played second base for the Western Hills team, and despite his shrimpy size, he knocked out those line drive hits he now calls "ropes." The Reds has some doubts about his size, but signed Pete to a contract and sent him to a Class D league. Pete hit .277.
He also began to grow - taller, broader across the chest, thicker in the thighs. In 1963 he came to spring training and astounded veterans by running like a sprinter to first base when he drew a base on balls. Yankee pitcher Whitey Ford watched Pete dash down the first-base line and gave him a nickname that lasted: "Charlie Hustle."
At 5-11 and 190 pounds, Charlie Hustle was no longer "little Pete." He showed how big he'd grown by winning the Reds' second base job that spring of 1963, then hitting .273 to win the rookie-of-the-year award. In 1964 he hit .269, .312 in 1965 and .313 in 1966. After missing nearly 20 games in 1967, he dropped to .301, but then came the .335 year in 1968 - "the year of the pitcher." Pete likes to say with a fat-cat grin.
Twenty-six-year-old Pete Rose is now looking ahead to his prime years as a hitter. He thinks the years of the pitcher are numbered. "I think the reason the hitting was off last year," says Pete, "is that last year was the first year since the new expansion teams came into the league, Houston and New York, that those teams have had good pitchers. You go to New York and you see Seaver, Koosman, Selma, Ryan, Cardwell; you go to Houston you see Dierker, Wilson, Cuellar, Giusti, those guys are good pitchers.
"But next year might be a different story. Those two new expansion teams will have good pitchers but they can't come up with five starting pitchers.
"Another thing: You check the records you'll see that anyone who hit .300 last year, they're not home run hitters. They hit the ball to all fields, and they can run. I can run. Matty can run. Felipe Alou can run. Alex Johnson can run. Carl Yastrzemski can hit the ball to all fields. I think the trouble may be that that the guys are trying to hit too many home runs.
"I think the owners have got to let it be known you can make money hitting singles, doubles and triples."
Rose approves of the fat $70.000 a year Curt Flood gets from the Cardinals even though Flood in not a home run hitter. "I always said I wanted to be the first hitter who didn't hit home runs to earn $100,000 a year," says Pete, who earned $55,000 last year. "At the All-Star game, Bob Gibson told me that his roomie, who is Curt Flood, said me is going to beat me to it.
Pete's eyes glittered as he said that, the competitive fire showing. "I wonder what it would be like," he said, "to sign a contract for $100,000.)
Before he's through, Pete Rose - who just may be the next man to hit .400 - probably will find out (Devaney, 14,54-56).
Story Taken From Whitestone's Baseball Annual No. 9 (1969) - Pages 14, 54-56.
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