A titan of childhood gone

 

I know the postseason is here and everyone learned of Pete Rose's death yesterday evening/afternoon, but this wouldn't be a blog if I wasn't behind.

Rose was one of the titans of my youth as far as baseball players. Somewhere along the way I graduated from Ernie & Bert and come on and zoom, zoom, zoom-a, zoom to watching live baseball on TV. Big Bird and The Count became Reggie Jackson and Pete Rose.

Those were the two biggest ballplayers on my TV. They were the biggest sports guys period on my TV (well, Howard Cosell became very present). I've mentioned all this before and I did a post on Pete Rose fairly recently in which I mentioned this, too.

 

I was never a Rose fan. Didn't like the team he played for, didn't like his playing style. Media folks and critics used to brand him as the world's highest-paid singles hitter and I bought into that. Plus he just seemed so damn cocky out there. 

 

My suspicions about the man were somewhat right -- not about the playing part of his game, but the other stuff. The story obit we ran in our newspaper last night got into all of his awfulness -- the gambling and philandering. He summed up the stereotypical worst in a ballplayer as far as language, misogyny and just being gross. But, wow, could he play -- and, wow, could he make a baseball card sell.

 

Rose's cards were always tough gets growing up. I didn't see a Pete Rose card until 1975 and that card didn't make it into my set that year. In the ensuing years, I struggled to find one. Nothing in 1976. In 1977, I landed one, but it was a big prize to other kids in class, too. A classmate, Tania, was a Reds fan and a Rose fan. There was a lot of swiping cards out of classmates desks at this time and I think she and the Rose card was involved, though I don't recall if I was the victim or perpetrator, or it was some other classmate's issue.

 

 

 

1978 came, and, wow, I landed Rose on practically the first try. Amazing! Much later I learned that the Rose was a double-print in that set and no big feat. Rats. But in 1979 I landed one fairly early, too, and it was still considered quite the prize.

 

 

To this date, my '70s Rose cards are in slightly less pristine shape, a dented corner or worn corner. Even as I got older, those cards were tough.

 

But '79 was his last Reds card and in the 1980s, when he became a Phillie, the cards didn't seem quite as special, nor as difficult to find. All part of the '80s glut probably. With the emergence of two other card companies, it wasn't too hard to find a Rose.

 

Still, some of my favorite Rose cards in my collection are from the 1980s. Here are a few of those favorites, 1980s or otherwise:

 

 

Let's do it. 1975 Rose and his little friend. If you had told me in 1975 that I would someday own the 1975 Rose card and also his mini card, I would have performed cartwheels all the way down the block. And I didn't even know how to do a proper cartwheel.

 

I did not know the '50s flattop Rose. I knew the Prince Valiant Rose. But, look, there are both of them together! The Super Veterans cards in 1983 Topps remain underrated. If I haven't done a post on them already, it deserves one.

I did a whole post on this card, too. I was so freaking excited when I landed the 1979 Burger King Pete Rose a few years ago. This was the first card we knew of to show Rose as a Phillie (albeit airbrushed). It was strange, it was captivating, it also had the NL All-Star banner. We needed it. And I mean everyone and your grandma.

 

The 1985 set is the first time Topps featured a separate card for each of Rose's job responsibilities. He had a manager card and a player card (which also denotes his manager post). It was pretty odd at the time. I like how Rose with his hat off signifies "manager". I also like how Topps made Rose's player card No. 600 but his manager card a common number at 547.

 

I have never been able to land any 1960s Pete Rose cards, except for in the '69 set. I did see one in my hot little hands when I was evaluating a collection for a coworker, but then I had to let it go (it was the 1967 card, I believe). This 1986 Topps retrospective allowed collectors to own a card with those untouchable Rose cards on it. That was cool.

 

Here is another cool 1986 Rose card, a box-bottom version in O-Pee-Chee language no less! I still think the red borders on the box bottoms is the most wild treatment of box bottoms in box-bottom history. 

Someone is going to bring up Expos Rose. So there you are. Rose's time with the Expos was brief, but it coincided with a lot of people starting the hobby, so it gets a lot of attention -- a lot more than I was giving it at the time. But it's still wild seeing him in that uniform.

This is the oldest Rose card I own (thanks to trading away his '69 base card in high school). I just added the Batting Leaders card from the set that features Rose, so that was a nice timely add. I hope to add the '67 Rose one day and the rookie Rose is forever on my White Whale list, mostly because of Ken McMullen, though.

 

I believe this is the last time Topps acknowledged Rose, in the 1989 set, the very year he was banned from baseball. I'm sure the best way for Topps to cross Major League Baseball would be to issue a Pete Rose card, which is why he hasn't appeared in 35 years.

 

Pete Rose is not a Hall of Famer. (I subconsciously have made that mistake when writing a couple of times). But this Fleer prediction from 1986 isn't necessarily a failed one. I know many famous folks have written that Rose will never be inducted into the Hall of Fame. But you don't know what will happen years and years and years from now. Hell, who thought 20 years ago we'd see professional leagues touting gambling every third commercial? In 50 years, the Hall of Fame might be on Mars and inducting space aliens.

I hate what gambling has done to sports and sports fans, I've never been a Pete Rose backer, but something like that will make your brain spin. Rose violated the cardinal sin of MLB but ...

It will be strange to see Rose's feats and name recede into the background over the years, like so many of my 1970s players have. Even Reggie Jackson, at his advanced age, isn't talked about at even a quarter of the level that he was for  the first four decades of my life.

Pete Rose was a name in the news on almost a daily basis in the 1970s and 1980s, columnists loved to write about him. And just in case you weren't sick of him already, there he was on a commercial, and then another one. And then he was singing. Help.

They say "never meet your heroes." Well, he wasn't my hero, he was fairly rotten according to just about every current assessment. But I was after Rose cards for only one reason: I just wanted to complete the set. And he didn't make it easy.