Rose Colored Glasses (1970)

Ray Fosse, Pete Rose, and the price of victory.

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Just a quick reminder before we get going today: Here’s a link to the showpage for the reported podcast I wrote and narrated about San Francisco’s complex political system, One Party Town. You can also find it on ITunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts—the episodes will be released next week, and will initially require a free seven-day trial of Wondery Plus to listen to, which is easy to sign up for (and, ahem, easy to cancel).

Please bookmark and share and listen and rate it when the time comes, if you feel so inclined.

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I.

Let us first evoke the name of Roy Fosse, because when Fosse died in 2021, the very first sentence of his obituary mentioned Pete Rose. The reverse is not true, because Fosse’s career was defined by a single act of pathological competitiveness, and because Rose’s legacy proved to be both expansive and daunting, a Shakespearean rise and fall that raised serious questions about celebrity and morality in America. Fosse was merely collateral damage in that story.

If you want a straight-up obituary of Pete Rose, who died this week at the age of 83, there are plenty of good ones out there. Here is an excellent one by my Substack-mate Paul Daugherty, the longtime Cincinnati sports columnist. Here is Bruce Weber’s sweeping obit for The New York Times, which lands on Ray Fosse more than halfway through, and quickly recounts that day in July of 1970 when Rose collided with Fosse in the All-Star game, a glorified exhibition, and wound up separating Fosse’s shoulder and ruining his career.

Weber summarizes, in two sentences, the central dilemma that Rose’s death resurfaces:

Was this, as those who lament the cost to Fosse’s career would have it, a dangerously lunatic play by Rose in a game that was essentially an inconsequential exhibition? Or was it, as Rose and his supporters believe, proof of Rose’s greatness and his character as an athlete, the act of a consummate competitor with only one objective, no matter the contest?

Best as I can tell, Pete Rose never truly apologized to Ray Fosse, presumably because he thought he had nothing to apologize for. He ran over Fosse and kept going, and if Fosse got left behind—if Fosse’s career was essentially destroyed—that was his problem. One day in 1971, the year after, they saw each other before a game. “Hey,” Rose said. “You’re off to a slow start (this season).”

And Fosse thought, I’m off to a slow start because I’m in pain because of what you did to me.

And this, of course, was a harbinger of the attitude that would eventually lead to Rose’s undoing: He thought only of that lone objective, without regard for the consequences or the pain he might cause to others. He was unforgiving about the way he lived, at least until he needed us to forgive him.

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II.

In a lot of ways, I think the argument over whether Pete Rose belonged in the Baseball Hall of Fame was kind of a MacGuffin. Of course he belonged, just as all the scoundrels who are already enshrined in the Hall of Fame belonged, too. The purpose of a museum is to capture history, good and bad. But there is a much more existential question here underlying the Hall of Fame question, which is: What are we willing to tolerate in order to win? Is it OK to bend the rules and treat people terribly—to actively hurt others, or even commit crimes—if it leads to victory?

I think we’re wrestling with that question every day now as we approach an election that’s almost entirely predicated on these issues. In the days before Rose died, we saw it play out again, as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers current quarterback, Baker Mayfield, went on a podcast and essentially stated that the team’s previous quarterback, Tom Brady, had alienated his teammates in his relentless pursuit of victory. (“High-strung,” was how Mayfield put it. “Pretty stressed out…guys weren’t having as much fun.”) And while broadcasting the Bucs-Eagles game last Sunday, Brady responded by condemning Mayfield, declaring that if he “wanted to have fun, I was gonna go to Disneyland with my kids.”

I imagine, if Pete Rose heard Tom Brady say that in the days before his death, he would have appreciated it. Rose refused to believe he did Ray Fosse or anyone else wrong. He was convinced that he was doing the right thing by pursuing winning at all costs; he believed that victory and empathy could not co-exist. And it seems increasingly clear that there are a lot of people in this country who believe he was right.

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