Quote:
Originally Posted by Ocotillo
He's such a complicated figure.
Between the lines, he's the model ballplayer you want to teach young players to emulate. He was baseball smart, knew as much about the game as anyone and maximized every ounce of baseball ability he had. All heart and guts.
Off the field, he was a dirtball and made stupid decisions.
It's a tragedy because he had so much more give to baseball but his lifetime ban meant he couldn't even work with minor league players or get invited to a spring training camp.
|
He was an overrated try-hard who's quest for the hits record made the teams he played on worse for the last decade of his career. And he occupied an offense first position at 1b for all of that where he couldn't field worth a damn AND provided C caliber offense from the dead bottom of the defensive spectrum.
His everything he did after his first Reds stint was a farce. He should've retired then.
As for teaching minor leaguers - He'd have been the guy teaching dudes to chop wood and other silly shit like that. He'd have been out of the game by 94 and then spent the next 20 years on every morning radio show bitching about how the game has changed. Because he was a stubborn ass who never had a shred of humility.
The cult following of Pete Rose has never made a drop of sense to me.