For the Good Times

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Dave Bristol managed Pete Rose in the minors and majors. He had a top-step view of the on-field greatness of the Hit King, including 1968 and ’69 when Pete won his first two NL batting titles with the Reds.

In 1968, the Year of the Pitcher, Rose batted .335.

The league average was .237.

Pete Rose lapped the field, hitting 98 points higher than the league average, beating out Matty Alou, who was at .332. The next year Rose batted .348, beating out the Great Roberto Clemente, who was at .345.

Each time, Rose had to sprint to the finish line to win the batting title and he met the challenge head-on. Bristol remembers in detail those races and I even double-checked the box scores of the last games of 1968 and ’69.

More on all that later.

Rose died on Monday at his home in Las Vegas at the age of 83 after appearing at an autograph show in Tennessee over the weekend. Rose was banned from baseball in 1989 for gambling on the game while manager of his hometown Reds.

MLB has all types of gambling partnerships now, so the landscape has changed dramatically since 1989, and the owners are pulling in massive amounts of gambling money.

Bristol is 91 and is as sharp as ever. He has always been a wonderful baseball man with tremendous common sense, and all that came through in a column I wrote on him called A Baseball Life, right before the start of spring training this year.

It’s that simple. You can’t tell the complete story of baseball without Pete Rose.

The former infielder was a player, manager and coach and is in the Reds Hall of Fame. I spoke to him on Wednesday about Pete.

“That’s a sad thing,’’ Bristol told BallNine of Rose’s passing, “64 years I’ve known Pete. The first time I saw him was in spring training 1960 – and in 1962 I managed him at Macon and the next year he went to the Big Leagues, I was with him in the Big Leagues at Cincinnati and then at Philadelphia and then came back and coached for him.’’

Pete was all of 19 in 1960.

In 1963 when Rose went to the majors he put on a show and was named the NL Rookie of the Year.

Bristol managed the Reds, taking over from Don Heffner in July of 1966. He managed the team the next three seasons before he was replaced by Sparky Anderson. Make no mistake, it was Dave Bristol who primed the Big Red Machine for success.

In 1970, under Anderson, the Reds went to the World Series, something they would do in five of the next six seasons. The Reds lost the first three but won the World Series in 1975 and ’76.

Pete Rose was in the middle of it all.

During our conversation, the subject of the Hall of Fame came up, of course, and I asked Bristol about his thoughts on Rose and the Hall.

“Well,’’ Bristol began in his easy manner of speaking, “they have a lot of Pete’s memorabilia there. They don’t have him.’’

That is a fact.

The Hall of Fame, in my book, is a museum first and I believe the all-time hits leader with 4,256 hits should be in the Hall.

It’s that simple. You can’t tell the complete story of baseball without Pete Rose.

In addition to the hits mark, Rose played in more games, had more at-bats, had gotten on base more and had singled more than anyone in history, and was a 17-time All-Star, an MVP and a Rookie of the Year.

Even though he was banned from baseball, Pete Rose never stopped promoting the game of baseball, a game he deeply loved. I was lucky enough to have many baseball conversations with Pete, including talking to him in Cooperstown where he would set up shop on Main Street in a store a short distance away from the Hall, where he would sell his autograph and speak to fans.

There was only one Pete Rose. There will never be another player like him.

I also believe you can’t tell the story of baseball without Barry Bonds, the all-time home runs leader and Roger Clemens.

Put their deeds, good and bad, on their plaques and move on. The fans of those players would appreciate that. It is a messy situation that baseball has let linger, but if you are going to have those superstars’ memorabilia in the Hall of Fame, put the players in the Hall, too.

Maybe now, since Rose’s lifetime has ended, he will find a way to the Hall of Fame. But the same was said about the great Shoeless Joe Jackson when he died … 73 years ago. Say it ain’t so, Joe is still on the outside looking in at the Hall even though Ted Williams, the last man to hit .400 lobbied for Jackson to be put in Cooperstown.

And again, it’s a much different picture now with gambling come-ons all over the place, all over the game, all over the playoffs.

Bristol lives in Western North Carolina, which was crushed by Hurricane Helene, but his immediate area, Andrews, N.C., escaped the carnage.

“Thirty miles away it’s a war zone,’’ Bristol told me. “Because of the storm there is a shortage of gas and everything, the big grocery store here is Ingles, but the warehouse where they got everything stored is in Nashville, and it is under water. We are 100 miles west of Ashville, they say the shelves are bare on a lot of items. I don’t know what people are going to do.’’

What a sad situation. Baseball friends have been calling Bristol to check on him. One of his former players Bristol spoke with was Hall of Famer Tony Perez, a player Bristol first managed in 1964 in AAA San Diego.

“I talked to Tony last night,’’ Bristol said, “and they were together in Nashville.’’

Rose sat in a wheelchair as he posed for a photo with Dave Concepcion, George Foster, Perez and Ken Griffey Sr.

“Tony said Pete didn’t have much to say, and you know Pete, he’s always kidding around and getting on each other,’’ Bristol explained. “Tony said Pete was not himself at all.’’

Rose won those two World Series with the Reds and another one with the Phillies in 1980.

In 1983, Rose hit .316 for the Phillies at the age of 42. He hit .345 in the NLCS in the win over the Dodgers and .321 in the World Series loss to the Orioles. Bristol was a coach with that Phillies team and marveled at Pete’s success, especially when you consider that 21 years earlier, Bristol was managing Rose at Macon when Pete hit .330.

“What a good player he was for me at Macon,’’ Bristol said of that 1962 season. “We were playing Greenville, the Dodgers club, he was 0-for-2 in the first inning and then went 6-for-7 during the rest of the game. Nobody loved to hit more than Pete Rose did. If he got two hits, he wanted three, if he got four he wanted five and that’s what drove him.

“He won two batting titles when I was managing the Reds. In ’68 he went 1-for-7 on a Friday night. I said you come out here early tomorrow, we will have extra hitting. We were playing the Giants and Gaylord Perry was pitching. He went 5-for-5 off Gaylord. Then the final game he got a hit against Ray Sadecki.’’

In the 5-for-5 game, after his fourth hit, Rose was informed by Giants shortstop Hal Lanier that Matty Alou was turning up the heat with a 4-for-4 game.

Pete got one better, 5-for-5. Pete was told, “You need to keep going, so he got that extra hit,’’ Bristol said.

“The next year he was in Atlanta, in the on-deck circle and a guy in the stands said, ‘Hey Pete, Clemente, got 3-for-4, you need a hit to win the title and he went out and laid down a perfect bunt to third base and got the hit to win the title,’’ Bristol recalled.

Pete Rose made the most of any challenge.

Dave Bristol loves music too and so do I. He called me back Wednesday evening to note that Kris Kristofferson and Pete Rose passed away within days of one another. Kristofferson died on Saturday in Maui. Pete Rose passed on Monday in Las Vegas. Kris Kristofferson was one of my favorite singer-songwriters, too.

“We lost two icons,’’ Bristol said. “Kris Kristofferson was a musical genius and a Rhodes Scholar, too, and Pete was a baseball genius.’’

Thinking back on Rose’s career, Dave Bristol and all baseball fans, despite all the problems caused by Rose’s gambling and then his lifetime ban from the game he loved, can take a page from Kristofferson’s prolific songwriting book, a song Kristofferson wrote in 1968, the same year Pete Rose won his first batting title, when Pete hit .335 in the Year of the Pitcher, 98 points higher than the league average, a year only six players hit .300, a year Dave Bristol managed Pete Rose for the Reds.

The song?

For the Good Times.