Pete Rose and the Limitations of Hustle
As a kid I loved baseball and Pete Rose. I still love baseball, but evidence demands a verdict, and I long ago had a reckoning over Pete Rose.
Fandom is an inherently insular thing that is specialized to the individual. Being a fan usually develops based on where you grow up, who you grow up around, and crystalized by key events witnessed, experienced, or ingrained. There was zero chance a kid like me, born to a multiple degree holder from West Virginia University and raised in a state with no professional sports team and where Mountaineer Field on gameday is the largest city in the state, was going to be anything but musket-firing Old Gold and Blue for life.
My fandom of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team is a bit more complicated. My father’s 50’s childhood and the Mickey Mantle New York Yankees being the only team to have radio coverage in West Virginia at the time lead him down that road. Outside of dad’s Bronx apostasy everyone else on both sides were Reds fans. My maternal grandfather hardwired his love of the Red from the 60s through the Big Red Machine of the 70s into the family before I arrived. Most West Virginia houses had the Appalachian trinity photo set of John F. Kennedy, John L. Lewis, and Jesus Christ up on the wall, but as far as Up Yonder…
