Two Reviews - Pete & Lance
How should we think about these two fallen greats?
Last week as I recovered from two days of bar examination, and two months of bar preparation, I threw on the four-episode documentary series Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose. Directed by Mark Monroe, it’s an engaging but bloated tale of Pete Rose’s entire career, from humble beginnings as a Cincinnati kid drafted to his hometown’s big league club, to baseball’s Hit King who broke Ty Cobb’s record of 4,191 career hits, and finally to his (probably) permanent exile from professional baseball for gambling.
I love this picture - it’s also the one used for the Charlie Hustle title card on MAX.
As a casual sports fan, the thrill of a story like Rose’s is not in the recount of the “Big Red Machine” period in the seventies where Rose’s Reds dominated baseball - I barely care who won the World Series last year, much less fifty years ago - but rather in the personalities of the characters involved.1 Rose was not the most talented guy on the field, but the doc argues he was the most intense. Everybody else jogged to first after a walk, but Charlie Hustle ran. Just like he ran through catcher Ray Fosse at home plate in the 1970 All-Star Game just to score a run in a meaningless game (and allegedly forced a turning point in Fosse’s career). The guy was a dirt dog before the term existed; that’s what endeared him to his hometown fans in Cincinnati, and is doubtless why he remains a secular saint there today (or at least he is at the Cincy Hard Rock).
For those not familiar with the basics of Rose’s gambling: for years, he denied betting on baseball, even though the League had him dead to rights.2 Eventually, in 2004, he admitted to betting on baseball, but claims he only ever bet on his team to win. Charlie Hustle spends a little time explaining why that’s still problematic: if you’re managing the team with money riding on a specific game, maybe you dip a little deeper into your bullpen to win this one, at the expense of later games where you may not have money at stake. Since then, Rose has made multiple attempts at reinstatement, but can never seem to keep his nose sufficiently clean and public statements sufficiently contrite/benign to bring it home.
As the doc moves, slowly at times, through Rose’s career, we get snatches of who this guy really is, and that’s the core of what makes a project like this interesting. It’s how a guy reaches the height of the game, but retains the self-destructive tendencies to turn him into a pariah, and flub opportunities for redemption. It’s how he remains a beloved celebrity for so many, particularly in his hometown, but has left some wreckage in his wake.
As the doc expounded on Rose’s gambling woes, I realized I had unwittingly programmed a long-term double-feature for myself because several weeks ago I watched another documentary series about a sports pariah: Lance Armstrong. 30 for 30: Lance was made in cooperation with its subject, and it’s chock full of candid admissions from the cycling great about the what, when, where, and why of his doping. Like Rose, Armstrong denied any culpability for years, but ultimately caved and confessed the a truth. Unlike Rose, Armstrong understands the media and can give a polished interview. Neither has achieved redemption. Lance shows us a bike racer who’s barred from entering races, and instead spends much of his time mired in litigation related to his sins.
Armstrong is vastly more media-savvy than Rose, and seems to have created a cottage industry out of explaining himself.
Do they deserve this modern-day version of exile? Armstrong’s doping cut to the heart of cycling’s integrity, but he (and his teammates) claim that he was one of many who were doing it. Rose also says he never bet against his own team. Even if you assume the worst - say, hypothetically that Lance was one of the only dopers, and Rose actually bet against his teams - does that nullify everything else that they did? I don’t think it does. I think Lance’s story is, at bottom, a hopeful one: a guy can get diagnosed with a hideous disease, kick its ass, and return to a life that is changed, not destroyed, by the experience. It’s a heartening story worth repeating on its own merits. Similarly, if I had a kid starting Little League, I’d show them Pete Rose on the basepaths as an example of respecting the game and your opponents by trying your hardest, and playing to win. At the same time, I’d have to acknowledge to that kid that Pete Rose also did some bad things, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn something good from the guy too.
That, I think, is the mental error that we all make as we try to figure out the role of people like Pete and Lance in “the culture.” No matter how many times Pete totters up to an autograph show on creaky knees, people expect the guy who was a superhero on the field to be a superhero in all aspects of life. I don’t know anybody who is perfect, so I don’t think it’s logical to expect that of people like Pete. That’s not a defense of his gambling; it’s an acknowledgment that he did some stuff that’s worth emulating, and some stuff that’s not. Like most of us.
This conversation is basically the sports version of the “can you respect the art but not the artist” thing that has accompanied reassessments of artists’ bodies of work in Hollywood, among other places. My response is the annoying lawyer-answer: it depends. Sometimes, the bad overshadows the good. Sometimes you can see something worthwhile despite the bad. I think we’re obligated to at least look for the good, and most of the time, there’s something there. After all, if you believe people can rehabilitate in other contexts (i.e., the circumstances under which we just lock people up and throw away the key for criminal violations are quite narrow), why not in these?
Although Lance Armstrong remains associated with cycling, now as a podcast host, I believe, ironically, that it’s baseball’s gradual opening to gambling that sealed Rose’s fate as a pariah, and as an example. As the League entangles itself with legal sports gambling, it can’t afford to let up on a guy whose conduct implicated baseball’s integrity. Current players who might be tempted to break baseball’s gambling rules might see a Rose comeback as a suggestion that there’s a path to redemption, and maybe the payoff of bending gambling rules is worth the risk. The League has already hammered current players who break the rules; welcoming another back would contradict that strict approach.
Kinda like the Olympics. Don’t pretend that you care about slalom canoeing because if you really cared you’d think about it more than every four years, what’s actually interesting are the people who devote their lives to excellence just so they can paddle that little boat down some rapids for a shot at gold and glory.
The MLB Commissioner at the time was Bart Giamatti, father of actor Paul Giamatti. Eight days after banning Rose for life, Giamatti the Elder died of a heart attack at 51.