The Machine

by Joe Posnanski

  “What did you do?”

  “I signed it,” Pete says. He will sign anything. He has been known to sign the Dowd Report—the 225-page report prepared by special counsel John M. Dowd that led to Pete getting banned from baseball. He has been known to sign the police mug shot taken after he was arrested and then jailed for tax evasion. Pete sits in this spot six hours a day, four days a week, and he waits for Las Vegas tourists to come in. People ask him if he’s sad. He says, “Hell, no, I’m not sad. I get paid a lot of money.” He will not say how much.

  “I get paid seven figures,” he says. He will not be more specific.

  “It isn’t just barely seven figures either. I mean, I get paid a shit-load of money,” he says.

  “I got no problem with Johnny Bench,” Pete is saying now. While he talks, Sarah walks over to the computer and starts working on something. “The only thing is, Johnny is moody. He’s goddamned moody. You never know what you’re going to get. Like with me, I’m the same all the time. But Johnny’s just moody.

  “The thing with Johnny is he never could accept the fact that I’m from Cincinnati. That’s why Pete Rose Way is there, you know? I never got mad at him because in Binger, Oklahoma, there’s a Johnny Bench High School. Cincinnati’s my hometown, that’s all. He never could accept that.

  “It’s not important to be the best player ever with the Reds, right? I mean, we were all great players. Johnny was one helluva player. Joe was a helluva player. Tony was a helluva player. I was a helluva player. Davey, George, we were all great players. But Johnny thinks it matters. I mean, I get along with him all right. He said that stuff about me after I got suspended, stuff about me not respecting the game and what have you. I mean, that was bullshit, because nobody respected the game more than me. Johnny Bench didn’t respect the game more than I did. But we get along all right.”

  Just as he says those last words, Sarah walks over. She has printed out a photograph: it is of Pete and Johnny from a few months before, and they have their arms around each other’s shoulders, both of them smiling deep.

  “See,” Pete says, right on cue, “we get along. We just took that picture. I like Johnny all right. We’ve been through a lot together, you know? We get along.”

  Sarah walks away smiling. “Am I right?” Pete asks as he watches her. “Doesn’t she have a great ass?”

  “I had a way of making guys better,” Pete says. “Maybe that’s because of the way I was brought up in the game. They all treated me like shit when I was a rookie. All of them. Except the black players. Frank Robinson. Vada Pinson. Those were the only guys who treated me like I was a man. The rest of them would get on me. They would rip me for running to first base on walks. Hell, I started running to first on walks when I was nine, and I’ll do it when I’m ninety. That’s how my dad believed the game should be played. But they treated me like a dog. And I said I would never let that happen to a young player again.”

  I tell Pete that, almost to a man, every player on the 1975 Reds had some story about Pete helping them, inviting them to his house for dinner, picking up their check at a restaurant, helping them find a place to live. Pete does not smile. He only nods.

  “Yeah, that was the disappointing thing that happened when I had my problem,” Pete says. “It wasn’t just players. It was reporters too. I helped them. And when I had my deal, they all turned on me. That was disappointing. No one has any recall of anything good. That’s the problem with fucking society. Once they judge you guilty, you’re guilty for life.”

  His mood turns dark now. When Pete gets this way, he cannot hear, and he cannot see. He talks, but he is not talking to anyone specifically. He is only talking.

  “I’m the biggest winner in the history of sports,” he says. “Think about that. It’s safe to say baseball players play more games than any other sport. And I’m the all-time leader in games won. That has got to mean something, doesn’t it? That has got to mean something.

  “That’s why it’s so strange what I did. When I was wrong. I respected the game. I respected the game more than anybody. I lived for the game. It was all I thought about, it was all I dreamed about, it was everything to me. And maybe that was my problem. Maybe the reason I did what I did is I am what I am. When I was finished as a ballplayer, I needed more. You know, I played every game in 1975. Every single game. Sparky must have come up to me fifty times that year and asked me to sit down. We won that year by, what, twenty games, right? He wanted me to sit down. He didn’t understand…I couldn’t sit down. I needed every fucking game. I needed every fucking at-bat. That’s who I was, and when I didn’t have that anymore…well, I was wrong. I had a standard bet, two thousand dollars every day on the Reds to win. No one knew about it. And I was wrong. I was wrong. And I paid dearly for it.

  “But you know what? I don’t think I had anything to do with the integrity of the game. That’s horseshit. Because I never directly had any impact on the outcome of the game. The guys today, with the steroids, they’re cheating. They’re cheating the game. They’re cheating Babe Ruth, they’re cheating Ty Cobb, they’re cheating fucking Tris Speaker, Cy Young. I didn’t do that. And the sad thing, the really sad thing, is Jose Canseco came out and said how many times he took steroids, he cheated, but if somebody wanted to give him a job in baseball tomorrow, he could take it. And I can’t. I’m banned. And who put more into the game of baseball than me? I’ll tell you who. Nobody. That’s who. Nobody. I’ve been suspended for nineteen years. Nineteen fucking years. You kill somebody, you’re not suspended that long….”

  While he talks, one of the store employees walks over and chirps: “Hey, Pete, we need an apology ball. We just sold the last one.”

  An apology ball. What the hell is an apology ball? Pete Rose grabs the ball, and he grabs a pen, and he carefully writes on the baseball: “I’m sorry I bet on baseball. Pete Rose.” If someone buys the apology ball, Pete will personalize it. A personal apology ball. Now, though, he slams it down on the table.

  “I’m in jail,” he says softly.

  Pete shakes his head. “I’d like to sit here and tell you that we had the greatest team in baseball history,” he says. “I wish I could tell you that. I mean, I didn’t see the ’27 Yankees. I didn’t see those Brooklyn Dodgers teams.

  “But I’m gonna tell you right now that I seriously believe we had the most entertaining team in the history of baseball, and that’s not even close. We had everything. We had Johnny and Doggie and George hitting home runs. We had Joe and Davey and Ken stealing bases. We had me playing my butt off every single night. We had Cesar playing center field, and I never saw anyone play it better. We had everything. We had white stars, we had black stars, we had Spanish stars. We had speed, we had Gold Glovers, we had power, we had daring base running, and we had a flamboyant manager. We had everything you need. And we had a good bullpen.

  “You can always argue. You can argue the ’27 Yankees or ’61 Yankees or the Brooklyn Dodgers. Let me tell you this: any team that’s got four Hall of Famers and a couple of others on the verge has gotta be one of the best teams in baseball history.”

  The Machine actually had three players in the Baseball Hall of Fame—Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, and Tony Perez. There is a fourth Red if you count the manager, Sparky Anderson. But Pete does not mean Sparky. He means himself. Pete is not in the Hall of Fame and likely never will be in the Hall of Fame. When he was banned from the game, he was taken off the Hall of Fame ballot. Every year, a handful of writers put Pete down as a write-in candidate, but those votes are not counted. If he ever managed to get on the ballot (an unlikely scenario), he would not get nearly enough votes. It takes 75 percent of the votes to get in the Hall of Fame. Pete Rose does not have 75 percent support. None of that matters. Pete views himself as a Hall of Famer.

  “You know who shocks the hell out of me?” Pete asks suddenly. “George Foster. You know, when he was playing, that guy wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful. We used to call him ‘Gabby’ because he never said
anything. Now the guy won’t shut up. He’s really changed.

  “Johnny hasn’t changed. He’s the same moody guy he was…. Davey, he’s still the same. Ol’ Bozo. We used to give him hell…. Doggie’s the same. I first met Tony when we were together in Geneva, New York, back in 1960. I was two days out of high school, and he was two months out of Cuba. There’s a closeness there with Tony. I spoke to him a week ago for a half-hour. And you know what? I have no fucking idea what he said.

  “Geronimo? He was another quiet one. Chief didn’t say a word…. Griffey would talk a little bit, I always liked Ken. He was a damn good player. He could really run. I’ll tell you a story, Griffey did something one time. He was battling for the batting title with Bill Madlock, I guess it was 1976. And he had a couple-point lead the last day. He asked Bench what he should do, and Bench told him to sit out the last game. Now, why take Bench’s fucking word? Bench never went through anything like that. What did he know about batting titles? I’d won them. I’d have told him to play the last day, get two hits, and put the fucking title away. But he asked Bench, and Bench told him to sit, and Madlock caught him on the last day. That’s what you get asking Bench about winning a batting title.

  “But, hey, I liked everybody. I liked our coaches. I loved Big Klu, Ted Kluszewski. I loved that man. He had those big arms. You know, he would walk over to you, and he would hold out his arm, and he’d say, ‘You know what that is? That’s a Polish-joke stopper.’ He was one helluva man. Sparky was too. I learned a lot from Sparky. I liked everybody. I liked our pitchers. I used to take McEnaney out to eat sometimes. He was fucking crazy. It was a good group. We really enjoyed playing together. We wouldn’t have been as good if we didn’t like each other, you know?” He shrugs. “You know what?” he says. “I don’t even know who the fuck our extra men were.”

  “You know what I get a kick out of?” Pete Rose was asking. “I get a kick out of people saying they are going to break my record. Guess what. Nobody’s breaking that record. The first three thousand hits are easy. Baseball’s an easy game to play when you’re 100 percent. But try getting those hits when you’re old, when your bat’s slow, when your back hurts. Hell, it was easy in ’75. I was young. We were all young.”

  A steady trickle of people have been wandering up for autographs, but all in all it has been a slow day in Vegas for the Hit King. Some days, the crowds line up to get a peek at Rose, to say a few words to him, to pay Pete to scribble his name. And why not? As Pete says, he’s the best deal in Vegas. For the price of your ticket, you get to meet the Hit King, talk to him, get a picture with him, ask him who was the toughest pitcher he ever faced and what was he thinking at first base after he got the hit that broke Ty Cobb’s record and…well, what the hell, they all ask the same questions. But the point is, he answers the questions. He puts his arm around strangers. And he asks: Does Bette Midler come out and take a photo with everybody? You can pay a hundred bucks to hear Celine Dion sing, but will she come out and shake your hand?

  “Well, will she?” Pete asks.

  No. Pete rests his case. The Hit King wins again.

  Yes, on those busy days, Pete gives all those people a thrill, something to hold, a brush with greatness. And what he won’t tell you, what he can’t bear to say, is that he needs those days too. Because it’s on those days, when he’s in demand, when there’s action going, when he can hear the slots bells ringing, when the people are shouting, “You’re the greatest, Pete”…maybe he feels invincible again. And maybe he feels like a Hall of Famer. The quiet days are harder. This is a quiet day.

  “We live in a fucked-up world,” Pete says suddenly. “USA Today had that survey of the top ten sports disasters or whatever the hell they called it. And you know who won? Mine. Mine was ahead of O. J. Simpson. How the fuck is that possible? Ahead of Rae Carruth. Those guys fucking killed people. How is betting on your own team to win a bigger story than that? What the fuck are they talking about?”

  I try to get him back to talking about the ’75 Reds. He seems happiest talking about the Machine. But first this mood has to pass. He rants for a while longer about how he was wrong but he wasn’t this wrong, he deserved punishment but it’s too much, how quickly people forget. Finally he is exhausted. A woman walks up and asks him who was the toughest pitcher he ever faced.

  “Bob Gibson,” he says automatically, and he signs her baseball.

  He pulls out his money clip and looks at it closely. “Joe gave me this,” he says. “I went and spoke for him out in Oakland a couple of months ago. He didn’t invite Bench. He didn’t invite Perez. He invited me. So I went. He gave me this money clip. It’s a nice one too. It’s nice. Gold.”

  He runs his fingers over the money clip, which is clipped around several $100 bills. Joe was his closest friend on the Machine. They ripped each other and hugged each other and pushed each other. “Joe will tell you that I made him a better baseball player,” he says, and it’s true, Joe does say that. But Joe also ended up living the life after baseball that Pete felt sure would be his. Joe is in the Hall of Fame. Joe is nationally famous as an announcer. Joe is one of the most respected men in the game. It’s different for Pete.

  “I was talking to Joe just the other day,” he says. “We talk a lot. But we don’t talk about old times. We talk about stuff that’s going on today. No point in talking about old times all the time. We lived them. They were good. But we can’t live them again.”

  I ask Pete Rose if there is a single memory, a single moment from that 1975 season, that he thinks about more than others. Pete says he remembers all of it. He remembers the slow start. He remembers when Sparky asked him to go to third base. He remembers the hot streak that seemed to last all summer. He remembers destroying the Pirates in three straight. He remembers Game 3 of the World Series, when Fisk and Armbrister collided. He remembers Game 6, when he was hopping from man to man and shouting, “Isn’t this the greatest game you ever played in? You’ll be telling your grandkids that you played in this game.” He remembers Game 7 and the way he paced in the dugout and shouted at his teammates, not to inspire them but to inspire himself. He remembers it all. He remembers exactly how many hits he got that year.

  “You know what makes me feel good?” he says. “How many kids come up and ask for my autograph. They’re saying, ‘There’s Pete Rose, he’s the best hitter ever, he’s the best player ever.’ I always tell them, I’m not. That’s Babe Ruth. He’s the best player ever. Me? I’m one of the most consistent players ever. I think I consistently hit the ball harder than just about anybody. I hit the ball hard.”

  He pulls out the money clip and looks at it.

  “Joe Morgan gave this to me,” he says again, like he forgot saying it the first time. “It’s pretty special, you know? Joe still likes me. I really think Joe still likes me.”

  AFTERWORD

  The Big Red Machine towered over my childhood. That is at the heart of why I wrote this book. I grew up in Cleveland, and I was eight years old in 1975. Sometimes, it seems to me, we all just want baseball to forever feel like it does when we are eight years old. The good players seem great. The great players seem legendary. And the legendary players are like flashes of light.

  Well, there were legendary players in Cincinnati. Rose. Bench. Morgan. Perez. At the time, the Cleveland Indians were a ragtag bunch playing in blood-red uniforms in a cavernous old stadium that always seemed to have more birds than fans. Those Indians were my team, and they would have been the subject of this book…if I thought anyone else wanted to read a book about the 1975 Cleveland Indians.

  The Reds played a four-hour drive away, and they were perfection. They took the field with their hair cut short, with their shoes polished black, with their uniforms pristine white and worn just so. They could beat you, in the words of Joe Morgan, any way that you could be beaten. They were too brilliant to love, and too unassailable to hate. But being a good Clevelander, I tried to hate them anyway.

  The last thing anyone wants is another
book claiming another team was the greatest ever. The shelves are filled with the greatest—the greatest match, the greatest game, the greatest player, the greatest team, the greatest sports book, and so on. I do believe the 1975 Cincinnati Reds (and the ’76 Reds that followed) were the greatest team in baseball history. I don’t believe any other team—not the 1927 Yankees, not the “Boys of Summer” Dodgers, not the Casey Stengel Yankees, not the Oakland A’s of the early 1970s or Derek Jeter’s Yankees of the late 1990s—could match those Reds for power, speed, defense, star power, innovation, and personality. We can sword-fight with statistics and logic forever and never come up with a correct answer. I believe the Reds were the best.

  But that is not what drew me to the book. No, it was the chance to write about baseball from my childhood. It was a chance to relay the brilliance of Joe Morgan the baseball player to those who missed his singular career and know him only as the baseball announcer. It was a chance to write about Johnny Bench’s brilliance, and George Foster’s power, and Ken Griffey’s breathtaking speed, and the grace of Cesar Geronimo. It was a chance to write about a year in America that, in memory, feels as faded and distant as the crackling color footage of the 1975 World Series.

  It was a chance to catch up again with the ol’ genius Sparky Anderson.

  And mostly, for me, it was a chance (I hope) to resurrect a little bit of the Pete Rose as I remembered him from 1975. The story of Pete Rose’s fall has been written and rewritten so many times that I sometimes think America has forgotten the one-of-a-kind player who refused to sit out a single game during the 1975 season even though the Reds won the division championship by twenty games. I sometimes think that we lost the player who was so driven that he would get to the ballpark first, leave the ballpark last, and then go to the car in his driveway so he could listen to West Coast games. Nobody ever loved baseball more. Nobody ever gave baseball more. It doesn’t pardon Pete his sins, not at all, but it seems to me the man thrilled too many people and played too hard to be remembered only as the man who gambled on his team, was thrown into jail for tax evasion, and now spends his days signing autographs at a memorabilia shop at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.