COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. -- Another Hall of Fame weekend has come and gone without him. But as much as the Hall slams the door whenever Pete Rose approaches, it's never too hard to hear him knocking.
On Sunday, a group of Hall of Famers, led by Bob Feller, had threatened to storm off the podium if Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman had used his own induction speech to campaign for the Hit King's admission to the Hall.
It never did happen. Brennaman made just a passing reference to Rose, as did Tony Perez later. So Feller never budged. And neither did any of the other 45 living Hall of Famers on the stage.
|  | | Pete Rose is an autograph fixture during induction weekend. This photo is from 1999. |
But Monday, on an otherwise-serene Day After, the Hit King sat in a tent, no more than a gapper away from the Hall of Fame museum, and shook his head in disgust at the mere mention of Feller's name
"Ask Bob Feller where he sat last year for two days," the Hit King snarled, in between autographs. "Know where he was? Sitting right next to me -- because that's where he knew the crowd would be.
"Just remember this," Rose went on. 'When I go in the Hall of Fame, I hope Bob Feller's alive and I hope I'm alive -- because I guarantee you, Bob Feller will be right here next to me -- because that would be his biggest payday.
"Know anything about memorabilia?" Rose smiled. "Well, I've got something for you. It's the rarest thing you've ever seen -- an unsigned Bob Feller picture. ... Hey, let me say one thing. Of all the guys I ever played against or looked at, Bob Feller is the only one I have no respect for, because he says one thing and does another."
When Feller was told later that Rose had read his remarks, he responded: "Good. I'm glad he did read them. I wanted him to read them."
Asked why he signed next to Rose last year, Feller replied: "None of his business. Just like it's none of my business why he's signing. I'm tired of hearing about Pete Rose. He's history. Has he ever read what's posted in the clubhouse? If he can't read, he'd better get glasses. He likes this. It makes money for him. He's history. Good hitter. Period."
But this wasn't all about Bob Feller. This was about the never-ending tension the Hit King causes whenever he strolls down baseball's ultimate Main Street.
The New York Times reported that the group of Hall of Famers who intended to walk out included Feller, Ralph Kiner and Frank Robinson. Earlier in the weekend, Johnny Bench turned away from an ESPN camera crew when Rose's name was mentioned.
When the prospective walkoff was brought up to Rose on Monday, he had a one-word response: "Why?"
"What did they think was gonna happen (if Brennaman had talked about him)?" the Hit King wondered, on a morning when he sat side-by-side with Perez and Dave Concepcion, signing away. "Did they think they were were gonna take them out of the Hall of Fame if he did that?
"Look what they did to Tony Perez," Rose said. "They were telling him not to sign autographs here with me today. ... Hey, there were 50 Hall of Famers signing up and down this street here. Why would they get mad at Tony Perez?"
But Rose said he was aware there was pressure put on Brennaman not to talk about Rose in his speech -- because Brennaman had visited him Saturday.
"I told Marty, 'You behave now,' " Rose said. "I said, 'You behave up there. Don't get yourself in trouble because of me.' But I wasn't nervous about it, because I knew Marty would talk from the heart and I knew how I treated Marty as a youngster (in the broadcasting business), just like Tony Perez talked from the heart."
Unlike Perez, unlike Brennaman, the one Big Red Machinist who didn't say a word about Rose this weekend was Sparky Anderson. The Hit King claimed he "wasn't disappointed" by that. But he sure noticed it.
"I wasn't surprised," he said. "Sparky's his own man. What surprised me about Sparky was this: How can any manager win 2,000 games and go in the Hall of Fame and not mention one player? He didn't have to mention me. But he didn't mention Kirk Gibson, Jack Morris, Alan Trammell, Johnny Bench, Perez, Joe Morgan, Davey Concepcion. You've got to mention one player. Don't you? What? Did they put him on a time limit or something?"
When he was told that Sparky was, in fact, on a time limit, Rose shook his head.
"Hell," he said, 'how many other people did he mention? He talked about (former Tigers publicity director) Dan Ewald for 10 minutes. Hey, I know Dan Ewald is a good friend of his. But he talked about him, didn't he? Maybe he didn't mention any players because he'd have had to talk about me. You can't get up there and talk about me after you talk about Bud the way he did. He did say one thing, 'Commissioners can make mistakes.' Was that just to pacify the Cincinnati fans?"
But when Anderson was asked why he didn't mention any players in his speech, he said: "What am I gonna do -- talk for an hour? And then I have to go to Morgan and Concepcion and Foster. How are you gonna mention players? I said that players are the only reason you get there, didn't I?"
And Anderson said that if Rose felt he couldn't mention him and the commissioner in the same official breath, he was right.
"I wouldn't mention his name," Anderson said. "I wouldn't ever mention his name in that situation. Is it right, to the commissioner of baseball, to talk about (Rose) when he's sitting right there? What? So people can boo him? I don't do things that aren't right. You don't embarrass people. That platform yesterday was not meant for Peter Rose. It was for (Carlton) Fisk, Perez and (Turkey) Stearnes and me."
But Rose said there were no hard feelings on his part over not being cited by his old manager.
"Look, I love Sparky," Rose said. "Sparky's the greatest. He was just being nice to Bud Selig. It was almost like Sparky took the time yesterday to talk about Bud Selig because he felt sorry for Bud Selig, the way he was treated."
As always, the Hit King had no shortage of things to say on Bud, too -- and many other Hall of Fame-related subjects. His greatest hits included all of these sound bites:
On all the cheers Rose's name evoked Sunday, as opposed to all the boos Selig's name evoked: "I'd just like to sit down and look the guy in the eye and say, 'What do you think the fans want? Isn't baseball for the fans -- or did I miss something somewhere? Has my situation changed in the eyes of baseball fans? Is it snowballing my way? I think it is. Does Bud Selig think if he did the decent thing and reinstated me, people would hate him? ... I don't know. Maybe he likes to be booed. How can Bud Selig come to the Hall of Fame and know that when he gets out of his car he'll get booed? He can't want that. Would you?"
On Bench's blatant distaste for Rose's presence in Cooperstown: "I'm not doing this to spite the Hall of Fame. I understand the history of the Hall of Fame and what it means to be in there. You think I don't know what Bench and those guys accomplished in baseball? Who knows more about that than me? I guess it's all right for Bench and Morgan to do the Big Red Machine show with me Nov. 11 and 12, but not here."
On why his Pete Rose Museum happens to be located, quite conspicuously, in Cooperstown: "Hey, I work for nice people, and they come from here. That's why it's here -- because this is where they built this museum for me. If I was from Hoboken, N.J., that's where it would be."
On the hypocrisy of having Hall of Famers threatening to protest if he ever makes the Hall: "How can anybody make the statement that if Pete Rose goes to the Hall of Fame, they'll walk off the stage? I mean, please. What about all the guys who had problems who are in the Hall of Fame? (Orlando) Cepeda had some problems, didn't he? See, I don't like to start mentioning names of guys here. But Ferguson Jenkins had some problems, didn't he? And he and Cepeda are good friends of mine. But Babe Ruth had some problems. Ty Cobb had some problems. Am I the only guy who could be in the Hall of Fame who has skeletons in his closet? Heck, my skeletons are out of the closet. And believe me, I wish those things had never happened. You think I don't wish the last 10 years of my life weren't just a bad dream? I do. But I know I have to live with it."
There was plenty more of this. But much of it, you have heard before. What made these words so tough to listen to on this weekend was that it should have been one of the greatest weekends of Pete Rose's life.
On a weekend that was, in many ways, a celebration of the Big Red Machine, there was Rose, watching on television when he should have been a center-stage attraction.
And don't think the Hit King didn't feel it.
"Yeah, I did," he admitted, "especially when guys bring these pictures in here. They've got Perez, Bench, Sparky, Morgan and me all lined up. I don't think there's ever been a picture of five Hall of Famers (on one team), has there?
"But I don't sit here," the Hit King said, "and think about how it could be. I would if were unsuspended. Then I'd sit there and think about it. But I can't worry about it now, because I can't worry about things I'm not in charge of.
"You know," said Pete Rose, almost poignantly, "what I mean?"
Jayson Stark is a senior writer at ESPN.com. | |
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