Read as Part of CBR16 Bingo: games. Pete Rose is a former baseball player and this is a book based on his life.
As I said last year in my review from Eight Men Out, I’ve always had mixed feelings on Pete Rose. Along with the Black Sox, he’s the one most famously banned from baseball due to a sort of gambling scandal. The rampant denialism got under my skin and I’ve just never liked the guy.
I’ve softened a little, not because Rose has changed much (though he has finally admitted to betting on baseball) but because I’m getting too old to support the sanctimony of the powers-that-be in baseball, especially with sports giving legalized gambling a full bear hug.
Either way, I knew for a while I wanted to read this book before I see the HBO documentary, which I keep hearing is very good. Also, I knew little about Pete Rose the man, aside from him being a gambling addict and a philanderer.
After reading this, I’d say I know more than I did but not a lot. The writer gives sketches into Rose’s life but there’s very little into what made him tick. This isn’t comprehensive like the two excellent biographies on Ted Williams, and that’s a shame because Rose is a compelling figure in his own right.
What the book covers well — and what I think the writer really wants to talk about — is the shady characters from his gambling life. From underworld figures to craven hanger ons, those sections of the book read like a bizarre crime novel and I wish the author had just focused 300 pages on that instead.
So I wound up liking this well enough but I still feel like Rose’s life deserves a better treatment.