Pete Rose is one of the greatest players in the history of Major League Baseball ( MLB), and we should start by acknowledging that. He owns five all-time records including most games played (3, 562 ) and most career hits (4, 256 ). He was a 17-time All-Star, three-time World Series champion, a National League ( NL ) Rookie of the Year, and was the NL batting champion three times. By anyone’s standard, Rose’s expert achievements are nothing less than spectacular.
In writer-director Mark Monroe’s new HBO Max docuseries” Charlie Hustle &, The Matter of Pete Rose” (” Rose” ), every highlight of Rose’s career is revisited, both good and bad. Rose played every game as if it were his last, despite the name” Charlie Hustle” given by New York Yankee mythology Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle. He was powerful, powered, uncompromising, and completely dialed up to” 10″.
Although Rose’s” all out” approach led to record-setting annual contracts with the Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies and the above-mentioned accomplishments, it furthermore made him one of the most revered and hated men in sports history. Monroe skillfully identifies the distinction between Rose and the musician whose hit record he broke ( Ty Cobb ) as professional enemies rather than friends at one point, not out of jealousy but because the two men were compulsive and conceited.
Clocking in at 223 days, the four-episode set is presented out-of-sequence. Although this tale choice is effective in movies and almost every film starring Quentin Tarantino, Monroe pulls it down. This really is n’t surprising as Monroe employed this same blueprint ( as a writer only ) for past standout titles such as” Becoming Cousteau” ( 2021 ),” Lucy &, Desi” ( 2022 ), and” The Beach Boys” and” Jim Henson: Idea Man” from earlier this year.
Monroe split the line into three parts: Rose’s first and personal lives, his football career, and the longer decrease that began while he was the Reds supervisor.
MLB director Peter Ueberroth and his eventual leader, National League President Bart Giamatti ( father of actor Paul Giamatti), reportedly questioned Rose about rumours that he had bet on MLB games less than three decades after his retirement in 1989. While Rose admitted to gambling on football, baseball, and horseracing, he strongly denied betting on sports. Following the meeting, John M. Dowd, an attorney, was immediately appointed to lead the investigation into the allegations.  ,  ,
Everything in the above paragraph occurs in the first instance of” The Longshot” and will undoubtedly be met with wildly divergent visitors responses. For non-baseball viewers and/or those unfamiliar with all things Rose, it might appear to be too much of a teaser, which is natural.
It might seem odd to combine this with just images of Rose’s domineering father’s domineering papa and videos from his high school football games and pee-wee moments. I viewed Rose’s youthful innocence as Monroe’s juxtaposition of the assumption of mature misbehavior, which, while maybe not illegitimate, was at best morally dubious and a distinct violation of one of baseball’s oldest rules.
This concept,” Rule 21: Misconduct”, was drafted by annual ball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in 1920 in the midst of the 1919 World Series. Eight players from the Chicago White Sox, who are widely favored, combined for several games to win the set, ironically. This concept is still posted in every baseball hall to this day, but it is not even mentioned in” Rose.”
What Monroe chose to include instead is the lifetime banishment of the eight White Sox players and, in particular,” Shoeless” Joe Jackson. Despite having a.356 lifetime batting average ( third best in history ), Jackson was never inducted into the Hall of Fame because of the 1919 scandal. This is almost the same cause Rose was given the same care.
The question Monroe is most concerned with is not whether Rose gambled on games while playing, but rather the games while managing the Reds ( 1986-1989 ). The results of Dowd’s review, which did not contain any spoilers or specifics from the series, allowed MLB to permanently ban Rose.
Despite fully cooperating with Monroe throughout various discussions, it seems as though Rose still struggles to understand why what he did was thus wrong and unethical. He spent more than 20 years deciding to accept that he had gambled on Red activities as manager, but it was too late. MLB may have given him a go if he had shown sincere repentance and regret when confronted by contradictory statements from various sources.
Rose frequently insulted Giamatti and his son, Fay Vincent, in people while suffering from careful memory, shared close quarters with wicked people, and made no attempt to hide his continuing playing habit.
What Rose did instead was to dig in and toss carloads of dangerous insults into a trash fire of festering injuries, which she now chose to do otherwise.
For instance, Rose attempted to deflect attention away from decades of self-inflected public relations blunders by jokeing that “unlike O. J., I did n’t kill my wife” when she was in a room full of amiable admirers during a recent gathering. There were more shudder groans and gaze rolls than light laughs at this.
The key to Monroe’s greatest achievements in this situation was merely allowing Rose to remain Rose. The person is brimming with out-of-control arrogance, completely lacking in modesty, and worse, a total inability to recognize only how boisterous and unpleasant he comes off.
One of the many talking faces claims that the Rose incident was “baseball’s Watergate,” according to another section. At second, I felt this was a bit too much rhetoric, but in fact, it was useless on stage. Smaller crimes become big ones much more frequently than we might anticipate because of denial. What’s the word? ” Often the cover-up is worse than the murder”.
Rose is a cautionary tale not only for athletes but also for people with a large public image who acts in defiance of what they know is bad but who also denies it when called out when called out.
A great example of this occurred in the late ‘ 90s when three football players — Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa, all of them recently medium-built people — bulked up with pills and hit home runs with exceedingly high consistency.
In the end, Rose believed that his success on the baseball diamond and the admiration from his fan base were more than enough to make up for what some people consider to be a victimless crime. The issue is that Rose could make personnel adjustments that would easily influence the outcome of games and thus illegally affect outcomes, just like the 1919 White Sox did.
It’s encouraging to know that MLB, at least twice, did the right thing by valuing ethics and respect over finances and ego. When this happened to the humble Joe Jackson, who was guilty purely by association, it was sad. Being exposed to such a selfish and contemptuous person as Rose feels appropriate.
The series makes its HBO Max debut on July 24.
Since 1995, Michael Clark has written over 4, 000 movie reviews and film-related articles for over 30 local and national media outlets. He is a member of the Georgia Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Awards, as well as co-founding the Atlanta Film Critics Circle in 2017.
