We should start by acknowledging that Pete Rose is one of the greatest players in the history of Major League Baseball (MLB). He owns five all-time records including most games played (3,562) and most career hits (4,256). He was a 17-time All-Star, three-time World Series champion, a National League (NL) Rookie of the Year, and was the NL batting champion three times. By anyone’s yardstick, Rose’s professional achievements are nothing less than stunning.
In writer-director Mark Monroe’s new HBO Max docuseries “Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose” (“Rose”), every highlight of Rose’s career is revisited, both good and bad. Given the nickname “Charlie Hustle” by New York Yankee legends Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle, Rose played every game as if it were his last. He was intense, driven, uncompromising, and permanently dialed up to “10.”
While this “all out” attitude led to receiving then-record yearly contracts with both the Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies and the above-mentioned achievements, it also made Rose one of the most revered and reviled men in baseball history. At one point, Monroe deftly points out that both Rose and the man whose hit record he broke (Ty Cobb) had more professional enemies than friends — not so much out of jealousy but because both men were self-absorbed and conceited.
Clocking in at 223 minutes, the four-episode series is presented out-of-sequence. While this narrative choice works well in thrillers and practically every Quentin Tarantino flick, it is a potential hemlock for documentaries, yet Monroe pulls it off. This really isn’t surprising as Monroe employed this same blueprint (as a writer only) for past standout titles such as “Becoming Cousteau” (2021), “Lucy & Desi” (2022), and “The Beach Boys” and “Jim Henson: Idea Man” from earlier this year.
Monroe divides the series into three parts: Rose’s early and private lives, his baseball career, and the long decline that began while he was the Reds manager.
In 1989 — less than three years after retiring — Rose was privately questioned by MLB commissioner Peter Ueberroth and his eventual successor, National League President Bart Giamatti (father of actor Paul Giamatti) regarding rumors that he had placed bets on MLB games. While Rose admitted to gambling on football, basketball, and horseracing, he emphatically denied betting on baseball. The meeting was quickly followed by the hiring of attorney John M. Dowd to head an investigation into the allegations.
Everything mentioned in the above paragraph takes place in the opening episode (“The Longshot”) and will certainly be received with wildly divergent audience reactions. For non-baseball fans and/or those unfamiliar with all things Rose, it might appear to be too much of a spoiler, which is understandable.
Surrounding this with still photos of Rose’s blue-collar upbringing in Cincinnati as the son of a domineering father and clips of his pee-wee and high school football games might seem confusing. I took it as Monroe juxtaposing Rose’s youthful innocence with the inference of adult misbehavior that while perhaps not illegal was ethically questionable at best and a clear violation of one of baseball’s oldest rules.
This rule, “Rule 21: Misconduct,” was drafted by inaugural baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in 1920 in the wake of the 1919 World Series. Eight players on the heavily favored Chicago White Sox threw multiple games resulting in the Cincinnati Reds (oh, the irony) winning the series. To this day, this rule is posted in every baseball clubhouse yet is not mentioned at all in “Rose.”
What Monroe chose to include instead is the lifetime banishment of the eight White Sox players and, in particular, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson. Despite having a .356 lifetime batting average (third best in history), Jackson was never inducted into the Hall of Fame because of the 1919 scandal. This is almost the same reason why Rose received the same treatment.
The point Monroe leans in on the most isn’t whether Rose gambled on games while playing but rather the games while acting as the Reds’ manager (1986-1989). Without revealing any spoilers or particulars from the series, the findings of Dowd’s report were sufficient enough for MLB to ban Rose for life.
While fully cooperating with Monroe during numerous interviews, it would appear Rose still can’t figure out why what he did was so unethical and wrong. It took him over two decades to finally admit he bet on Reds games as a manager, but it was too little too late. Had he shown sincere contrition and regret when presented with indisputable statements from multiple sources, MLB might have given him a pass.
Rose regularly insulted Giamatti and his successor, Fay Vincent, in public while suffering from selective amnesia, shared close quarters with nefarious individuals, and made no attempt to hide his continuing gambling addiction.
What Rose chose to do instead then and now was to dig in and heap truckloads of toxic insults into a dumpster fire of festering injury.
For example, when in a room full of friendly admirers during a recent gathering, Rose tried to deflect attention away from decades of self-inflected public relations blunders by joking that “unlike O.J., I didn’t kill my wife.” This was met with a few faint chuckles and far more cringe groans and eye rolls.
Monroe’s biggest success here was simply allowing Rose to be Rose. The man is brimming with out-of-control hubris, thoroughly lacking in humility, and worse, a complete inability to recognize just how brash and obnoxious he comes off.
Another passage finds one of the many talking heads stating that the Rose situation was “baseball’s Watergate.” At first, I felt this was a bit too much hyperbole, but in retrospect, it was dead on point. Far more often than we might expect, small crimes become big ones because of denial. What’s the phrase? “Sometimes the cover-up is worse than the crime.”
“Rose” is a cautionary tale not only to athletes but to anyone with a high public profile doing things off and on the clock they know are wrong yet denying it when called out.
A perfect example of this occurred in the late ’90s when three baseball players — Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa, all of them previously medium-built men — bulked up with steroids and hit home runs with unusually high regularity.
In the end, Rose felt his achievements on the baseball diamond and the adulation from his fan base were so great that they were more than enough to offset what some people believe to be a victimless crime. The rub here is that as a manager, Rose could make personnel changes that could easily sway the outcome of games and thus illegally change outcomes, just like the 1919 White Sox.
It’s refreshing to know that, at least twice, MLB did the right thing by valuing ethics and honor over finance and ego. When this happened to the humble Joe Jackson, who was guilty purely by association, it was sad. Having it happen to such a self-centered and contemptuous man such as Rose feels appropriately justified.
The series debuts on HBO Max on July 24.
