Pete Rose is dead

This is a masterpiece. Nobody writes about uncomfortable truths and how they tie into sports like Howard Bryant.

 

Howard's, "Why didn't you just obey, Pete?" line hit me very, very hard.

 

This isn't a case of The Man driving the little guy to his knees.

Comparing Rose to Black teenagers clubbed to the pavement by toothpick chewing cops is a special brand of obscene few white writers would ever dare.

 

There were at least a dozen paragraphs in which you could sub out "Trump" for "Rose" and nobody would think it out of place

It was spooky after awhile.

 

Yeah, I didn't want to go there.

 

Also, there's every reason to think Rose did steroids too.

 

That's what made it so great. Intelligent people like us know exactly what he was getting it. The idiots would never get it, would think it was a wordy way to say goodbye to Pete Rose and would thus never scream at him.

 

You're the reason I put two and two together with Rose and steroids! Didn't know in real time and/or remember that one of the guys who ratted him out was a known roider. Plus his son got busted, right? And the blue code, such as it is, was super sturdy in the '80s, so even if teammates knew he was taking roids to catch Cobb, they were never going to say anything. Hell nobody's ever ratted out Curt Schilling for anything and he's an infinitely worse person/teammate with infinitely more telltale signs of steroid abuse than Rose. But yeah, anytime anyone says well at least Rose was clean when he broke this hallowed record...not so much.

 

Tommy Gioiosa.

ESPN.com: MLB - Stark: Another ghost haunts Rose