Do The Hustle

Pete Rose may never get his plaque in Cooperstown, his transgressions are simply too egregious for many to overlook. If Ryan Noggle and Neil Berg have their way, though, baseball’s hit king will be recognized on Broadway in a compelling musical chronicling Rose’s rise to stardom and his disgraceful fall, a tumble which continues to cast a shadow on one of the game’s all-time greats more than a year after his death.

Noggle, 48, is a successful television writer who has worked on shows such as Saturday Night Live, Marlon and The Neighborhood in addition to writing for Jimmy Fallon’s monologues on Late Nite w/Jimmy Fallon. Berg, 61, meanwhile, has been one of the most successful lyricists, composers and producers in musical theater for the better part of the last 40 years. He continues to tour with his wife, Broadway star Rita Harvey, sharing his love of and experiences in musical theater.

While the circles in which Noggle and Berg travel wouldn’t often intersect, they came together when Susan Gurman, the agent whom they share, introduced them in 2017. The duo quickly bonded, sharing their love for baseball. Noggle asked Berg if he would be interested in helping him rework a musical that he had written about Rose. Berg didn’t need to be coaxed and the collaboration produced the current version of Charlie Hustle, the behind-the-scenes story of a player who, at first blush, seemed to have it all but ultimately wound up with nothing.

The show, which Noggle and Berg feel will bring fans of Broadway and baseball together in a way not seen since Damn Yankees in the 1950s, has had multiple readings in New York and Los Angeles and was produced by Oakland Community College just outside Detroit last year. Producing a show and getting it to Broadway is not easy, though. It’s a process that often takes years. Add in the fact that the show is ever-evolving – Rose’s death and his name being taken off baseball’s banned list – have made it necessary to add more elements.

It’s a process that continues but it’s also one that started when both Noggle and Berg were youngsters, growing up enamored with the game they still love.

CINCY AND THE BRONX BOMBERS

Noggle was steeped in baseball while growing up in Indiana. His love of the Reds began early despite his missing out on the years when The Big Red Machine was dominating the sport. He’d listen to Reds games on the radio with his grandfather, a practice that is no longer appreciated as it once was.

The Cubs and Braves, whose games were broadcast on cable superstations WGN and TBS, were the only teams that could be seen with any degree of frequency nationally in the 1980s.

“My baseball loyalties never strayed from the Reds but they were never on TV when I was a kid,” said Noggle, who played baseball through high school and continues to satiate his love for the game by playing in men’s leagues. “I’d watch [Ryne] Sandberg then turn over and watch [Dale] Murphy. But the Reds were always number one. It was engraved in me, listening to the games with my grandfather on the radio.

“I’ve moved all over to New York and Los Angeles, all around, and the Reds have always been my team through good times and bad; usually the bad. I didn’t get to see the Big Red Machine but I grew up hearing about it from my dad and grandfather. My first Reds game was Johnny Bench’s last game so I got a little taste of Bench. I got to watch Rose for a while and saw [Tony] Perez and [Dave] Concepcion. But I missed the glory days of the Sparky Anderson era.”

Noggle was playing in Little League in the late 1980s when Rose’s gambling issues first came to light. They did little to impair his judgement when it came to Rose, though. He said he emulated “trying to play like Pete, as hard as Pete, and win at all costs”. Noggle now coaches his son’s little league team and they are, fittingly enough, the Reds.

“That win at all costs kind of attitude led to his demise; he refused to lose and admit to the things that he had done,” Noggle said. “Win and fight to the end. That’s what got him banned from baseball for over 30 years. It drove him to greatness and then onto his legacy being tarnished.”

Berg, meanwhile, had no love lost for Rose while growing up. He was born in the Bronx and was a Yankee fan from the outset, suffering the pains of a World Series sweep by the Reds in the 1976 World Series.

“I was a baseball nut job growing up but if you are specifically speaking about being a Rose fan, no,” Berg said. “I hated him because he beat the Yanks in ’76. I loved the hustle and the type of player he was and to be honest I was exactly that type of player. So, I respected his ability and how he played the game but he was on the Reds and they beat my Yankees so I was not a fan.”

Berg moved to and grew up in Rockland County, a northern suburb of New York City, during a time when the Yankees had regained their stature as one of the game’s great franchises. But as the Seventies gave way to the Eighties, both the Yankees and the Reds slipped back into the pack though Berg didn’t have much time to notice. He was too busy playing ball himself at SUNY Binghamton in upstate New York, which was at the time a Division III school. Berg’s .413 on-base percentage in 1983 is tied for seventh all-time in the school’s pre-Division I history.

He was an All-Conference centerfielder and had dreams of someday playing pro ball. He was scouted by the Mets and even tried out for them twice but a severely sprained ankle during his junior year limited Berg, ultimately dashing the faint hopes he had of moving to the professional ranks.

“I had friends who played minor league ball and one who played in the Major Leagues and in my heart I knew I was good enough to play pro,” Berg said. “But I was barely 5-foot-9 and though I ran well, I didn’t run like Mookie Wilson. I didn’t have the top sprint speed of the some of the fastest guys.

“I was the guy who, in my whole career, I struck out eight times. I was the guy who got on base and was a pain in the neck. I don’t know if I could have made the Majors because there are a lot of things that go into making that happen. I went to my second Mets tryout after my sophomore year and I saw the talent there. There was someone there who was 6-4 and he was awkward but he ran like the wind and had an arm that you didn’t know where the ball was going to end up but it was strong. And when he got up to hit, he took 10 cuts. The first nine he missed but the 10^th one he hit 420 feet and they signed him on the spot.”

It was during Berg’s convalescence from his sprained ankle that his true path would be revealed. He wrote his first musical and it was produced by the school’s theater department during his senior year. One of Berg’s professors was also the head of the Cider Mill Playhouse, a local theater just west of Binghamton, and he asked the centerfielder turned composer to write a pair of scores for upcoming shows – Trelawny of the Wells and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

While Berg continued to play ball – he played in national baseball tournaments into his 40s and stills plays softball in local leagues – the notion of playing professional baseball was, for all intent and purposes, behind him. He graduated having written his first musical and a pair of scores for other shows.

“I was deep into Hamilton lore and fandom and it made me think anything could be a musical. You had the FBI, mafia, blackmail, narcotics trafficking and it was all happening in one story juxtaposed to baseball.”

DO THE [CHARLIE] HUSTLE

Noggle lived in New York for several years earlier in his career and fell in love with Broadway’s musical theater during that time. He is also a big fan of contemporary music, including hip-hop, and when he saw the musical Hamilton in 2015 he was spurred on to write his own musical.

“I had never written a musical before but I always had that backburner itch,” Noggle said. “I had a desire to do something and I thought what personal stories could I dive into. I was locked into Pete Rose. I had read a couple of books on him and even as a Reds fan you think you know the story but you quickly learn that’s only five percent of the story. It was so compelling that the more I dug the more I learned that the characters were larger than life.

“[Former Reds owner] Marge Schott was already big, [former MLB hit leader Ty] Cobb was already big. You kept meeting these goofballs, Shakespearean clowns and though it was an unexpected story for the stage, so was Hamilton. I was deep into Hamilton lore and fandom and it made me think anything could be a musical. You had the FBI, mafia, blackmail, narcotics trafficking and it was all happening in one story juxtaposed to baseball.”

Noggle began working on the show in 2014, writing the song Mr. 4192. He then wrote a second song and said he couldn’t stop. He eventually presented an early version of the musical in Los Angeles. His newly hired agent, though, told him that while there was a merit to his musical, it too closely resembled Hamilton. He needed a new score and that’s when she suggested Berg.

“My job was to totally reinvent the score and it was great having that assignment,” Berg said. “Because of my knowledge of baseball, because I knew every single reference I could actually help give him some advice when it came to the baseball angle of the story. Rose’s baseball and personal lives are intertwined and the opening number is able to get a lot of the baseball in up to when he started managing the Reds. The opening number gives the backstory.

“People who don’t know baseball know this is a very famous athlete who excelled at his sport. We give stats and various things he did and once the show starts after the opening number he’s back with the Reds in Marge Schott’s office where she interviews him to see if he could be a player manager. You get to see another number where he breaks Ty Cobb’s record so there is a modest amount of baseball in it. But the story is really about what got Pete from when he started managing the Reds to his downfall. We tell the whole story.”

Berg said he worked on the score for six months, refining it on countless Zoom meetings with Noggle. The show takes place in the 1980s so Berg researched what was popular at the time and tried to pay homage to the music of the 80s with his score, believing that having a touch of authenticity would only add to the story.

The show’s first act chronicles Rose’s rise but at the end of the act, gambling is introduced and the impending doom, according to Noggle, becomes evident. The second act deals with Rose’s fall from baseball grace, a tumble that placed him squarely outside the sports accepted circle.

“Many of the people that are in the show are still alive except for Pete,” said Noggle, who has been married to his wife Amanda for 22 years. The couple have two children. “It’s just full of interesting characters. The show is very human and I couldn’t stress that enough when writing it. It has a lot of his father-son relationship with his dad which became the root of what he was. It flashes back to the 1940s with his father and there is just a sweet, human moment showing why he did what he did.

“[Former MLB Commissioner] Bart Giamatti is a great character, larger than life and Marge Schott was surely larger than life, a fun character and a strong woman. Pete’s wife was also very strong and made the decision to leave him, which is a big number in Act 2. Then there are his druggie meathead friends that serve as rodeo clowns and as bad influences on Pete’s shoulder throughout.”

BROADWAY BOUND?

There were two readings of the show in both Los Angeles and New York as well as the production last year in Michigan, which resulted in unanimous positive reviews. Getting someone to put the show on again at bigger venues, however, hasn’t been easy despite those positive reviews. Some smaller venues outside of New York have indicated they love the show but it’s too big of a production for them. Others have asked for money [$250,000 enhancement money] to produce the show.

“I can tell you this,” Berg said. “What we learned doing the show outside Detroit is that people who knew nothing about baseball flipped out over it and loved our show. It didn’t matter if it was about baseball or not. It was just about a flawed individual and people were taken in by the human element of it. And the best news we found out is that people who just love the theater loved it so we just have to find the right partners to get it done.”

One aspect of the show that should aid in getting it done is that the writer had Rose’s blessing. Noggle met Rose twice, first in 2016 in Las Vegas, and then in 2023 prior to the show in Michigan. He told Rose about the show during their first encounter, during which Noggle had him listen to some early demos. Noggle then updated him about the show’s progress while telling him about the then upcoming performance during their second meeting.

“He said, ‘I’ve got one note for you, kid’,” Noggle recalled about their first meeting. “I held my breath. I was thinking oh man, what’s he going to say. He said ‘There’s a lot of bad stuff in my story. You gotta put it all in.’ I told him you got it Pete and I was incredibly relieved. Not only was he giving me free license to tell the full story but he was actually owning his transgressions and wanting them to be shared.”

Noggle refers to the show as a living, breathing thing, one in which the ending has yet to truly be written. That ending will come when and if Rose does make it to Cooperstown, a point on which Noggle and Berg actually disagree should happen. Noggle says yes.

“As much as I try to make a show that’s not pandering, my personal leanings are there for two reasons,” Noggle said. “The accomplishments he had on the field; it’s hard to argue with those numbers. He’s kind of in a league of his own.

“Also is there any redemption [possible]? Pete gambled on himself to win. There is zero evidence that he ever gambled to throw a game. You look at all the betting sheets in the Dowd report. He bet on himself to win and is betting on yourself the worst crime in sports what with steroids and sign stealing. And now gambling is embraced by baseball. There are kiosks at stadiums where you can actually bet on a game.”

Berg, meanwhile, takes a much more cut and dry approach.

“I don’t think he belongs because he knowingly broke the one rule you’re not allowed to break,” Berg said. “I don’t believe he belongs in but I will say this in his defense. For me, one of the biggest reasons I wanted to write this is because there has never been a musical, at least since the 1950s, about gambling addiction.

“It’s so widespread today so get it out in the open. Pete Rose was an addict and unless it gets treated it’s hard to stop. He was tied to some bad people and he never sought help – and that’s one of the reasons why I think he shouldn’t be allowed in. He was offered help and at the very beginning if he had just said ‘I am an addict and I need some help’ I think things would have been different.”

Perhaps. One thing is certain though, Charlie Hustle, the man and the musical, will continue to keep Rose in the public consciousness for quite some.