Shelf Life

Tag: Major League Baseball

  • Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball

    Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball

    It’s an epic story. A young man with talent, maybe not as much as some but what he lacks in physical and athletic prowess he makes up with moxie and determination. And like most epics, there’s a rise to the heights and then a fall from grace.

    It could be a movie. Maybe it will be. But Keith O’Brien, an award-winning journalist has done a deep dive into the life of Pete Rose, winner of three World Series rings, including 27 hours of in-person and phone interviews with the baseball legend, has written “Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball.” It’s the type of story that even those who aren’t baseball fanatics (that would include me) would find as compelling as any work of fiction.

    Rose played Major League Baseball from 1963 to 1984 and then managed the Cincinnati Reds where he’d spent the majority of his career from 1984 to 1989. And what a career it was. His records still holding to this day include most career hits (4,256), most career games played (3,562), and most career at-bats (14,053). But it all came crashing down when it was discovered that Rose was betting on games including his own team.

    I caught up with author O’Brien during a book signing in Carmel, Indiana to another in Louisville. Closer to home he’ll be at The Book Stall in Winnetka on April 10.

    Like Rose, O’Brien grew up on the west side of Cincinnati, played ball as a kid, and had a love of baseball growing up.

    “My grandfather lived in Merrillville, and we’d visit him in the summer,” he says, noting that he considered the White Sox as his second team because they’d go to the games at Comiskey Field.”

    O’Brien thinks that might have helped get the interviews—Rose had never before agreed to talk to an author for a book unless he had editorial control over what was written.

    But it wasn’t their common roots weren’t what compelled O’Brien to write about Charlie Hustle, Rose’s nickname.

    “I felt that in the last 35 years that he’s been banned from baseball, making mistake after mistake off the field we have forgotten why we ever cared about him in the first place and so I wanted to go back and tell that whole story,” he says. “I told Pete back in 2021 when I originally reached out to him this felt to me like the time for reckoning with his past. To use the old sports cliche we’re all day-to-day but when you’re in your 80s like Pete Rose that notion is decidedly more present.”

    Ultimately Rose ghosted O’Brien.

    “It’s a guess as to why he stopped calling, my only thought is I was pushing it.” says O’Brien. “I wanted to talk about everything, the good times and the bad times—baseball, the off-field decisions, and the gambling. I think maybe in the end I might have just pushed Pete too far or as far as he was willing to go.”

    During his career, there had been rumors about Rose’s gambling though it hadn’t leaked out to the general public.

    O’Brien’s research and conversations with people who were on the scene when Rose was first called into the offices of Major League Baseball for a secret meeting in February 1989 indicate it could have gone a lot differently.

    “If Pete had been honest and told them the truth that yes he had bet on baseball and that yes he bet on the Reds and that yes he had a gambling problem, baseball would have done everything it could to save him,” says O’Brien. “I’m not suggesting he would have gotten off or wouldn’t have been punished. He would have but I don’t believe that it would have been the sort of punishment that he is still wrestling with 35 years later.”

  • The Big 50: The Men and Moments That Made the Chicago Cubs

    The Big 50: The Men and Moments That Made the Chicago Cubs

             Carrie Muskat, who started covering the Chicago Cubs in 1987, has written The Big 50: The Men and Moments That Made the Chicago Cubs (Triumph Books 2021; $16.95).

             “Really there are more than 50 moments because it was hard to limit them so it’s 50 plus,” Muskat tells me in an early morning phone interview. “I always say I’m bad at math.”

    Totally immersed in baseball and the Cubs, Muskat’s latest book has an introduction by Anthony Rizzo, the first baseman for the Chicago Cubs and a three-time All-Star who in 2016 helped the Cubs win their first World Series title since 1908. Her other books include Banks to Sandberg to Grace: 5 Decades of Love & Frustration with Chicago Cubs.

    Carrie Muskat

    Described as “the perfect primer for new Cubs fans and an essential addition to a seasoned fan’s collection,” the book recounts the living history of the team and features such greats as Ryne Sandberg, Ron Santo, Anthony Rizzo, and Ernie Banks among others.

     Muskat, who has conducted numerous interviews with players, at times takes a different approach in her book by not only relying upon her own interactions but also by talking to people who worked behind the scenes about the moments included in  The Big 50. It was a way to gain a new perspective on some of the players such as Sammy Sosa that she knew so well.

    “I talked to broadcaster Craig Lynch about Pat Hughes, the radio play-by-play announcer for the Chicago Cubs and got his insights,” she says, as a way of giving an example.

    In some ways, the those decades covering the Cubs was like being part of a large family.  In her time writing about Major League Baseball—she started in 1981—Muskat says she’s watched players like Kerry Woods, the two-time All Star former Cubs pitcher who is now retired, grow. The same goes for Anthony Rizzo.

    “I’ve enjoyed talking to people’s families, like Anthony’s, just talking about things,” she says. “I covered Shawon Dunston and then his son.”

    In her book, Dunston shares his insight on Andre Dawson in Moment 16 of  titled “The Hawk.” Dunston recalls having a locker between Dawson and Ryne Sandberg, who he describes as the quietest guys in the world. “Combined, they didn’t say more than 20 words a day, and I’m not exaggerating.”

    At the time, Dunston says he was “talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.” But by being between them, he learned to be quiet and think about the game before the game. “I learned how to be a professional because of Andre Dawson and Ryne Sandberg.”

    These scenes from the book support Muskat’s contention that players are really just people.

    “That’s one of the biggest things,” she says. “Even if they’re superstars, they’re just people when you get to know them.”

    There have been changes. Reporters used to sit in the dugout but not anymore.

    “It’s not as relaxed,” she says. “My favorite time is spring training which is more relaxed.”

    Muskat is freelancing now but she still is on the sports beat.

    “There’s always a story, every player has one,” she says.