65 Seconds - Part 1 of 3
65 Seconds - Part 1 of 3
One minute on the field, thirty days suspended, zero unreserved apologies
With our third post in three days (!), we begin a Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti story…but not the Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti story. You’ll see what we mean.
On June 28, 1988, Peter Edward Rose, manager of the Cincinnati Reds and one of the most famous and accomplished figures in American sports, got a parking ticket. He wanted this to become news, and so, it was news.
Rose had stopped for lunch on his way into work at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium, at a restaurant located up the street from the ballpark, a street officially called Pete Rose Way.
“I stopped today to get a salad, on Pete Rose Way, and I got a ticket,” he told reporters that evening.
The officer had recognized him, Rose said. This was fortunate, as Rose did not carry ID in Cincinnati (“Don’t need it.”) The officer nonetheless continued writing up a $29 parking citation to Pete Rose, on Pete Rose Way, so the disbelieving Reds’ manager offered him four tickets to the game that night against San Diego.
“[The cop] said, ‘Are you trying to bribe me?’
I said, ‘Yep.’
He said, ‘It’s not going to work.’
I said, ‘Well, I’ll give you the tickets1 for being a nice guy.’
He said, ‘OK, thanks, here’s your ticket.’”
Long before the parking citation, 1988 had been, to Rose, a season of excessive punishment. This latest episode, though dressed up as comedy, added to that narrative—another unjust fine he’d have to pay—from the roll of high-denomination bills he routinely kept in his pocket.
Pete Rose’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Season (at least to that point in his life) went off the rails on April 30, 1988, when the Reds hosted the New York Mets at Riverfront Stadium, a publicly-funded, Astroturfed flying saucer that first touched down next to the Ohio River in 1970. The 47 year old manager was in his usual place in the home dugout, embodying an impossible example for his players, who nonetheless tried to keep up.
With the game tied 5-5 in the ninth inning, the Reds’ starting pitcher, John Franco, continued to work. The Mets’ third baseman, Howard Johnson, led off with a walk and Kevin Elster made a successful sacrifice bunt that moved Johnson to second base with one out. Franco struck out the next batter, bringing up outfielder Mookie Wilson (why is it always Mookie Wilson?) with the game on the line.
Two beloved Reds’ broadcasting partners had the radio call: future Hall-of-Famer Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall, who spent most of a 16-year career pitching for Cincinnati before moving into the booth.2 The Cincinnati Enquirer later transcribed and printed some of Brennaman and Nuxhall’s remarks from the ninth inning for their readers, an unusual move.
So, with help from the Reds’ broadcasters themselves, here’s what happened:
Brennaman: And it’s Mookie Wilson with a count of a ball and a strike. Howard Johnson takes a lead at second.
Brennaman: John Franco checks him, throws. Swung on. Bounced to shortstop. Barry Larkin has it. He throws. The inning is over.
The inning was not over.
Larkin’s throw was offline, requiring Nick Esasky, the Reds’ first baseman, to stretch off the bag to reach it. Meanwhile, Wilson, one of baseball’s fastest players at the time, zipped up the line, trying to beat the throw.
Brennaman: [Esasky] stayed on the bag.
Replay would suggest he perhaps did not.
Brennaman: Now they’re saying Wilson is safe! I don’t believe that!
“They,” was first base umpire Dave Pallone, 37 years old, with nine seasons of big league experience. Pallone called Wilson safe, because, he would say later, Esasky’s foot came off the bag. Well, the call was one thing, and how Pallone made it was another.
Pallone hesitated for about three seconds, a rather long interval by the standards of his profession, creating an uncomfortable delay for everyone but Howard Johnson, who was running no matter what. The umpire later said he was watching Esasky’s foot and there was a chance he might have stayed on.
“He still had the opportunity to get back to the bag in time to make the out on the runner,” Pallone said. “So I have to wait until the play is finally over. I can’t rush the call. I can’t call a man safe and then call him out.”
In the moment, Brennaman and Nuxhall didn’t have that information, but given what they went on to say, it’s unlikely having it would have made much of a difference in their thinking.
Brennaman: Dave Pallone never gave a signal!
Esasky, hoping to learn the game was over, watched Pallone, looking for good news. Meanwhile, Johnson barreled around third and scored, giving the Mets the lead. Pallone called Wilson safe at first.
Brennaman: While the runner came in to score, [Pallone] started up with his hand and then gave the ‘safe’ sign. And the go-ahead run has come across. New York has taken a 6-5 lead, and I don’t believe it!
Nuxhall: Marty, unless I’m blind, Dave Pallone called him out.
Dave Pallone never called Mookie Wilson out.
Eight seconds after Dave Pallone called Wilson safe, Pete Rose reached him.
Start the clock.
The Reds’ manager arrived, his trademark haircut jammed under a Reds’ cap pulled low, a large ball of something jammed in one cheek, looking a bit more slouched than he had in his prime but otherwise just the same. His uniform was half-covered with a manager’s traditional windbreaker jacket, the only sign he was no longer in the lineup.
Rose bounded up to Pallone with hands open in an exasperated, pleading gesture. The umpire immediately shook his head, and Rose’s body language became more aggressive as he offered words we can only imagine were of the “choice” variety. The manager vehemently stalked in and around in Pallone’s personal space, but as he began to veer away, the umpire followed after him. This was a choice.
Turning on Pallone again, Rose squatted and made an exaggerated “safe” sign, no doubt explaining that this was how to properly make a timely call on an important play. Rose assumed the traditional position, his nose upturned just an inch or two from the taller Pallone’s face as he barked whatever he felt. He began wielding a pointed finger like a sword, that too getting as close as to Pallone’s face as possible without making contact. For angry managers, this was fairly standard stuff.
When the pointing started, however, Pallone became irate, and he began to bark back and jab his own finger up and down in front of Rose’s face. In that process, one of his jabs accidentally struck Rose on the cheek, perhaps even cutting it with a fingernail. This was an accident.
For a half-second, perhaps a quarter of a second, the manager froze, startled. In that split-second, you could actually see his mind working, running some primeval computational process to decide how to respond.
Rose brought his left arm up in front of his body and shoved it into Pallone. This was a big mistake.
Brennaman: Pete Rose has just bumped Dave Pallone, and made no bones about it.
Pallone jerked backwards, steadied himself, and raised his arm to signal that Rose had been ejected from the game. Shouting, Rose marched after the umpire and—less forcefully—pushed him again.
Esasky and Franco now wrapped their arms gently around their manager, trying to contain the already-substantial damage. Hovering next to Pallone at one point was the Reds’ second baseman, Dave Concepción, who—for reasons we will go into in Part 2 of this story—was the last person on earth the umpire wanted to see in that situation, but Concepción turned away, his mission perhaps accomplished. Pallone fell back behind the umpire crew chief, John Kibler, who had arrived from his post behind second base.
Rose allowed home plate umpire Eric Gregg to take him by the crook of his arm and walk him part-way off the field. From his body language, it’s clear that Rose wanted Gregg to understand Pallone had struck him first, pointing to his cheek, but this matter was already far out of the hands of anyone in the ballpark that night, including Gregg, who ended the conversation as quickly as he could. Rose departed for the clubhouse.
Stop the clock. That was 65 seconds.
As the field party tried to sort itself out, Brennaman and Nuxhall kept talking. This was their job, but it was also a mistake.
Nuxhall: Well, I’ll tell you, Pete shoved him, but Pallone hit him with a finger in the shoulder or in the face, one or the other. Pallone is a liar—I don’t know what else you can call him, because he definitely called Wilson out. And there’s … You can see on the replay that Pallone hit him in the face!”
Brennaman: That’s absolutely horrible! The throw was to the outfield side of the bag. Pallone appeared to call the runner out, and then all of a sudden he [called him safe].
Nuxhall: Here’s a replay. Let’s get a look at it. He’ll call him out.
Here, a pause, as Nuxhall realized his initial confidence was misplaced.
Nuxhall: You can’t see him in that one.
The sound of boos reverberated through the announcers’ microphones. Riverfront Stadium was about 80% full, a crowd of 41,000 unhappy Reds fans, along with a smattering of suddenly nervous Mets fans wondering what they’d gotten in the middle of.
Brennaman: Well, you can hear what the crowd thinks about it. The bad thing is, if he’s going to call the runner safe, he should have done it as soon as he could, that way Nick Esasky would have possibly had a play on the runner Johnson at home.
Brennaman: But there was a split-second delay before he gave the ‘safe’ sign— the runner scores—and New York has taken a 6-5 lead—and folks, I want to tell you, Dave Pallone absolutely stinks. He is a terrible, terrible umpire on any level of this game…
Did you do a double-take, there? So did A. Bartlett Giamatti, president of the National League. Anyway…
Brennaman: You hear the crowd! Barry Larkin has been charged with a throwing error … and New York goes up 6-5. I cannot believe that the powers that be in the National League allow an incompetent like Dave Pallone to continue working in this league! It amazes me!
Brennaman: And this is as angry a crowd that I’ve ever seen in Riverfront Stadium. And Johnny Franco’s standing behind the mound, and now John Kibler, the crew chief, walks in from second base, and Franco is upset and Kibler comes up to him. And now [catcher] Lloyd McClendon has gone out to try to calm Franco down. Pallone is within two feet of Franco. Eric Gregg is there. [Umpire] Jim Quick is there. All of this because of an incompetent umpire.
John Franco, angry and seemingly dazed, stood behind the pitcher’s mound. Later, after studying a lot of tape of what had happened, Rose noted this delay. “If play had resumed, as it should have,” things would have gotten better, Rose told a reporter later, adding that he did not appreciate how Franco contributed to delaying the game for these minutes by refusing to pitch and glaring at the umpires.
Brennaman: I tell you, they’ve just shown the replay again. Dave Pallone appears to make contact, making a point to Pete Rose, when he punched him in the cheekbone. But I tell you what, Pete gave him a pretty good forearm after that. And that might have some far-reaching effects.
It would.
Nuxhall: You know you hate to see things like that happen, but I tell…Pallone brought it on himself, and well, he’s, he’s a rotten umpire. I guess that’s the best way to put it.
Rose was out of the picture, but not forgotten by the crowd. “Ejecting Rose in Cincinnati,” the Sporting News would point out, “is not like ejecting any other manager. Don’t forget that Riverfront Stadium is located on Pete Rose Way.”
Trash began to fall in the outfield. One witness recalled a rain of beer cups and nachos from the second level. Hundreds of unruly fans hurled paper cups, wrappers, food, baseballs, and golf balls. Some threw batteries from their transistor radios and then the radios themselves. The golf balls came in for particular attention later on: “Hey,” an op-ed piece wondered aloud, “why did people take golf balls to a baseball game? Do they think they are going to get a tee time?”
In fact, people had not taken golf balls to Riverfront Stadium—those missiles had been handed out. This game happened to feature a promotional giveaway whereby the first 10,000 fans received a golf ball emblazoned with the Reds’ logo. Many of these souvenirs were returned during the events of the ninth inning.
Brennaman: [Third base coach] Tommy Helms is now coming out of the dugout. Pete Rose has been ejected. So at the moment, Tommy Helms is running the ball club. There’s all sorts of debris along the warning track, running from around the Mets’ dugout, all along the outfield warning track, and all the way around to the Reds’ dugout. And the grounds crew, … are trying to pick up as much as the debris as they possibly can, and at least get it off the playing surface, tossing as much as they can onto the warning track. Some they’re tossing over the outfield wall.
Fans chanted in the background.
Brennaman: And a profane chant has started up here at the ballpark. And I tell you, this is as angry as I’ve ever seen a crowd in this ballpark in the 15 years I’ve been here, and with good cause, I might add.
Nuxhall: I have not seen anything like this in Cincinnati, I’ll be honest with you.
Marty Brennaman made one other comment worth noting, though we do not have a direct transcript of what he said. As trash fell, someone threw a roll of toilet paper that landed near Dave Pallone, still standing on the field. Brennaman remarked that throwing toilet paper at Pallone was “appropriate.” He woke up the next morning realizing that this last comment, at least, had been a mistake, and apologized for it during the next broadcast.
Nuxhall: Now the grounds crew is going to clean up around the park, but they have thrown everything. And Pallone deserves it. You know, an ump like that doesn’t belong in the league. He’s a scab in the first place. … He’s a rotten umpire and he should be out of here. Now they’re going to take the teams off the field, while they clean things up.
That was easier said than done. “Not everything that was thrown,” a soggy fan remembered, “made it to the playing field.” One thing that did make it to the field was a drink cup filled with so much mustard that it stained Riverfront’s artificial turf for months afterward.3
Fed up after several more minutes of littering, umpire crew chief John Kibler motioned for the Reds and Mookie Wilson to come off the field while the Reds’ staff cleaned up. Once Kibler and the other umpires, including Pallone, re-took their stations on the diamond, another round of trash-throwing ensued, and according to some accounts, it was at this point that a number of people remembered they didn’t like golf anyway and decided to donate their Reds-themed golf balls to Dave Pallone, standing well within throwing distance at first base.
“Certainly it was as unruly a crowd as I’ve ever seen,” Kibler said afterward. This was not uninformed criticism—Kibler had worked as a New York State Police officer before becoming a professional umpire, a role in which he’d seen some doozies.
During the first of those seasons, in 1965, Kibler and the rest of his crew faced a seething crowd at the Astrodome in Houston following a controversial call.
When that game finally ended, Kibler noticed two pocket knives among the debris which littered the field. One was closed, one was open. Kibler put them in his equipment bag, where they remained on April 30, 1988. “I keep them,” he explained, “because I don’t want to forget.”
So, not forgetting what might come after golf balls, Kibler led a quiet conversation with Pallone and the rest of the crew. As the group broke up, Pallone turned and jogged off the field, alone this time, down a set of steps towards the umpire’s dressing room, hurried on by several more pieces of trash and an enormous wave of cheers. His colleagues would finish the game without him. Kibler himself moved over from second. “I was afraid when I went to first base,” he said.
The Reds displayed a warning on the scoreboard, written as a message from the team owner, Marge Schott, who’d watched all this from her seat near the dugout with her head in her hands in disgust.
“PLEASE DO NOT THROW OBJECTS ON THE FIELD, OR THE GAME MAY BE FORFEITED.
PLEASE ‘COOL IT.’
THANKS, MARGE”
So admonished and with Pallone out of sight, Riverfront fell into dejection. The Reds, shell-shocked and likely realizing their manager would be going away for a while, did nothing in the bottom of the ninth, and lost. That “L” would only be the first and least of that evening’s “far-reaching effects,” some of which would go far indeed.
If you were one of the 41,000 Cincinnatians (we had to look that up and that’s how you say it) present for the April 30, 1988 “Shove Heard ‘Round the World,” please write us at project318@substack.com or leave a comment sharing what you remember from the game.
We’ll have Part 2 of this three-part story on Monday, looking at the choices and events that built up to all this poking and shoving.
Next: “65 Seconds; Part 2”: Vendettas
If you enjoyed this story and are just stopping by, here are two other stories we published this week:
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One hopes the officer used those tickets; that night, the Reds won with a bases-loaded walk in the bottom of the ninth inning.
Nuxhall got a street, too.
Remember when we promised “extra” mustard this week? You didn’t think that was just a casual baseball bit of baseball-themed jargon, did you…?
That IS memorable. I love it! Thank you for the tip. I'm sure we'll do some non-baseball stories at some point. There's no reason to completely limit ourselves and leave inglorious moments on the table. I'll run it by the editor.
Yeah, the editor was fine with it.
We'll be sure to give it the treatment here and credit you for the lead.
This reminded me of two incidents, unfortunately both college basketball. Both early 90s. One incident, let's call it the first, is memorable because Steve Fischer grabbed the arena microphone and awkwardly and angrily spit words something like "we're Michigan! And Michigan doesn't throw on the court!!!" OK, Mr. Steve.
The other incident is much more memorable. Michigan had given all fans an inflatable, yellow (I think), plastic baton, sponsored by Nike. No instructions were given, but ostensibly we were supposed to inflate them and wave them in support of Michigan. However, these objects were made of plastic similar to shopping bag plastic, and the student section discovered at some point during the game that, when taut, you could rub the inflatable baton and make a noise like rubbing a balloon. THE MOST DISCONCERTING NOISE I have ever heard, when five thousand-ish people were rubbing this noise in concert. I'm sure the opponent was Michigan State. And reasonably sure the player was Eric Snow who AIR BALLED two consecutive free throws due to this hideous cacophony. It was certainly a guard, someone with a free throw percentage at least 70 percent, and definitely two air balls. Ok, maybe the second hit the front of the rim. I have never witnessed an airball free throw ever before or again. Michigan never distributed those noisemakers again (why?! So effective!). It was years before those noisemakers at the World Cup made a splash. The Michigan incident was glorious and should be chronicled somewhere.