65 Seconds - Part 3 of 3
Wherein Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall receive a stern talking-to and Pete Rose tries unsuccessfully to read a book
Here at last is the conclusion to “65 Minutes,” in which we’ll explore the near- and far-reaching consequences of “the Shove Heard ‘Round the World.” See? It’s growing on you.
In case you need to catch up, which, if you haven’t read those yet and are somehow here first, you do:
Part 1 - The altercation that started all the trouble.
Part 2 - A history of bad blood in like seven different directions.
And if you know someone who’d like this story or, bonus, who was there on April 30, 1988, please share our work!
April 30, 1988
In his office immediately after the Reds’ eventful 6-5 loss to the Mets, Pete Rose showed reporters “a red mark about the size of a quarter on his left cheek,” which he attributed to umpire Dave Pallone. “Get that on camera,” he said to the TV guys. “Get a picture of that. Zoom in.”
Someone updated Rose on what had taken place after his ejection. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” the manager said. “I hate to see fans throw objects on the field, but I’d say the fans felt they got railroaded and I’d agree 100%. That was a poor umpiring decision. I don’t understand why an umpire needs four seconds to make a call.”
Rose made his first tentative steps towards taking some level of responsibility (“I pushed him and I was wrong,”) only to quickly retreat (”But if he doesn’t touch me, I don’t touch him.”)
Asked about what consequences he expected for the night’s misadventures, Pete Rose pivoted from personal accountability to overall parity, a move that came to him as naturally as a headfirst slide: “I’d say it would be fair to suspend both of us. I just hope Mr. Giamatti asks for my side of the story.”
May 1
To his credit, Dave Pallone got right back up on the horse, working behind home plate the next day in front of a muted but hostile Cincinnati crowd, who booed him as he arrived and chanted “Pallone, go home!” on and off throughout the game, which otherwise proceeded without incident. He even summoned the courage to call two separate balks on Reds pitchers. Some umpires are afraid to call balks at all.
It helped that Pete Rose was away from the club, leaving Tommy Helms to continue his interim manager duties and preside over a loss. Dwight Gooden and the Mets also did Pallone a favor by taking the crowd out of the game entirely, beating the Reds 11-0.
May 2
After watching the tape of his worst baseball nightmare come to life at Riverfront Stadium, A. Bartlett Giamatti, the National League president, had no questions for Pete Rose. On May 2, he issued a thundering statement.
It was an “extremely ugly situation,” Giamatti wrote, “one of the worst in baseball’s recent memory.”
“Such disgraceful episodes are not business as usual, nor can they be allowed to become so,” he went on. “For forcefully and deliberately shoving an umpire, the manager of the Reds is suspended for 30 days.”
There was also a five-figure fine, but Rose would have paid six figures to avoid a suspension. The games were the pain.
It was, the New York Times reported, the most severe punishment ever imposed on a manager for on-field infractions, twice the length of the previous suspension for making deliberate contact with an umpire, and the longest suspension of a manager in 41 years.
“The National League will not tolerate the degeneration of baseball games into dangerous displays of public disorder,” Giamatti said with his usual stridency, “nor will it countenance any potentially injurious harassment of any kind of the umpires.”
“This is not going to become international soccer,” the NL president later told Sports Illustrated’s Peter Gammons, explaining why he’d pinned the sins of the crowd on Rose:
There is a symbiosis between what goes on down on the field and in the stands. There is a circuit of energy and, by the nature of his job, a manager must be held responsible. I hold managers to higher standards of behavior.
Rose had been dealt with, but Giamatti was not finished.
Inciting the inappropriate behavior of some of the fans were the inflammatory remarks of local radio broadcasters Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall. There is no excuse for encouraging a situation where the physical safety and well-being of any individual is put significantly at risk.
The Reds’ announcers were to present themselves at his office in New York the next day to discuss their on-air comments. No one could recall a prior instance where broadcasters faced disciplinary action by the league.
Dave Pallone received no discipline for his part in the altercation. Giamatti’s statement did not so much as mention it.
As news of the suspension broke, the Reds put out a prepared statement from Rose.
“No player or manager has greater respect for umpires than I do, and while I expected to be suspended, I am shocked at the length of the suspension I received.”
“I should have been given the right to give my side of the matter to the league president,” Rose said, vowing to do so in an appeal.
May 3
Umpires cheered Giamatti’s decision, of course. Harry Wendelstedt, a veteran official, said: “People have to remember this game is supposed to be a game. If I have to defend myself physically, I’m in the wrong business.”
The Reds’ reactions were similarly partisan. “Thirty days! How did they come up with that?” lefthander Tom Browning asked. “[Pallone] jabbed him in the face. He pushed back. It’s not like he robbed a store or something.”
“It would be one thing if Pete was a constant problem,” Buddy Bell said. “But this is his 28th year in baseball and they’re treating him like a convict.”
“Thirty days…” Hearing the news, New York Yankees manager Billy Martin chewed on the number and found it sour. “That’s heavy. If he punched a guy, a month would be strong even then. Thirty days is way out of line.”
There’s something wrong with our system when a guy like Rose, who’s been an inspiration to kids all over the country for the way he plays, gets this sort of penalty. And the umpire, who blew the play, doesn’t get anything. Guys get less time these days in jail for murder.
Tommy Lasorda, manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers and not exactly a restrained personality himself, tsked and shook his head. “Managers and ball players simply must realize that umpires are like sacred cows. You can’t touch ‘em.”
May 4
Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall appeared on time for their appointment on the National League carpet. The meeting lasted two hours. Emerging from Giamatti’s office, the broadcasters “looked contrite,” one journalist observed. Brennaman talked to the press about the conversation.
They were “chatting,” Giamatti had explained, because of some specific comments that he felt went beyond criticism and served to inflame the emotions of the crowd, some of whom had transistor radios with which to listen to the radio call. Giamatti objected to: repeated descriptions of the crowd as “angry;” Nuxhall referring to umpire Dave Pallone as “a scab” and “a liar;” and the toilet paper thing.
“Giamatti is so articulate,” Brennaman said, “you can be getting your butt chewed out and he makes you feel good about it.”
I said some things that were embarrassing (during Saturday's broadcast), and I promised to never be a party to them again. But I can't agree to never criticizing the umpires again.
Giamatti called it “a good meeting.”
I expressed my views and they expressed theirs. We all agree completely in deploring fan violence, wherever it occurs, for whatever reason.
Asked about the possible chilling effect of summoning announcers to league headquarters, Giamatti reminded reporters that Nuxhall and Brennaman were not members of the Fourth Estate, employed as they were by the Cincinnati Reds. Nonetheless, he sought to offer an olive branch: “I don’t intend to make a career of chatting with broadcasters.”
Returning for work the next day, Brennaman arrived at Riverfront Stadium with a patch of tape covering his mouth. Giamatti, somewhat handcuffed by his aforementioned career intentions, let it pass.
While the president chatted with the Reds’ broadcasters, Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News visited with Pete Rose at Riverfront Stadium. The manager was on crutches after having surgery the day before.
“Tennis.” Rose said of the injury. “In all my years in baseball, I never had surgery. Now I can’t get my uniform pants on over my knee.”
As they sat down to talk, the manager scowled at an advance copy of Sports Illustrated left on his office desk, announcing his suspension on the cover:
“Makes me look like a felon, a damn felon.”
A diatribe was brewing. McCoy turned on his tape recorder.
“It isn’t fair to blame me for the reaction of the people,” Rose said, his expression darkening.
I’ve had stuff thrown at me and nobody really said anything1–in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. They didn’t sell tickets in left field once in New York when I played left because the fans were mad at me. They hired 12 police officers to guard me in left field in L.A. They put that goat run (the “basket” outfield fence) in front of the stands in Chicago because of me. I’m not the new guy on the block as far as people throwing stuff on the field.
At the time of the interview, Rose was preparing for his appeal, intensively reviewing tape from the incident with Murray Cook, the Reds’ general manager.
I was wrong. Dead wrong. You should never shove an umpire, but an umpire shouldn’t hit you in the face, either.
I’m glad I didn’t react the way I was taught to react, or it would have been longer than 30 days. I might have been out of baseball for life. My dad taught me that when I was hit in the face to hit back in the face.2
Rose told McCoy he would spend most of the suspension, however long, with Cook in the general manager’s private box. “I’ll eat peanuts, drink Cokes, and do like you writers do—second guess. I’m not going to sneak around and try to put the bunt sign on.”
Filing an appeal got Rose his proverbial day in court, but jury selection had not gone his way. Giamatti himself would hear it, this one with considerably higher stakes than the previous year’s dispute over $200. The president would receive symbolic assistance from his small Executive Committee, one of whom, Chub Feeney, was himself a former NL president with whom Rose had butted heads.
May 6
A week after the altercation, Dave Pallone spoke publicly for the first time.
“The argument was so heated,” he said.
I have no idea whether I touched him with my finger…I have seen film clips, still photography, and slow motion stills, and I still have not seen any evidence whether I touched him on the cheek. I would never say that Pete just made this up. But I can’t honestly say whether I did or didn’t.
Of Rose’s punishment, Pallone said, “Everybody feels it is a tough suspension, but it will deter a lot of things from now on with players and coaches and managers, and it will stop this violence we had Saturday—the violence with the fans.”
The same day that Pallone finally spoke to anyone, Rose finally got to speak to the one person he hadn’t. The National League appeal board gave Rose all the time he wanted to read his statement and then upheld the president’s original decision of 30 days as appropriate. To make the trip to New York worthwhile, Giamatti did give Rose a three-day credit for time served.
May 22
Giamatti’s typewriter was busy in May. Later in the month, Los Angeles Dodger Pedro Guerrero made headlines for throwing a bat in the general direction of New York Mets pitcher David Cone, who had caught him in the side with an errant curveball. After getting plunked, the third baseman threw his bat towards the pitcher's mound like it was a frisbee. The bat sailed tens of feet to Cone’s right, but as a gesture, it was expressive. Benches cleared, etc.
For throwing a bat at another player, Guerrero received a four-day suspension from Bart Giamatti. Rose, eighteen days into his own suspension with three “Guerreros” left to go, was asked for comment.
“Sounds to me,” Rose said, “like he got off pretty easy.”
May 30
On the final day of the suspension, Thomas Boswell, one of the more prominent baseball writers of the era, joined Pete Rose high above the field at Riverfront to take in a game, calling the experience “a piece of Americana.”
The exiled manager watched through binoculars and whispered to interim manager Tommy Helms, hundreds of feet away, willing him to make Rose’s preferred in-game decisions, which Helms frequently did.
Without Charlie Hustle in the dugout, however, club morale had sunk and the Reds were 23-25. After one particularly tepid performance, an overburdened Helms had publicly unloaded on the team, calling them “...completely dead. Based on what I saw today, a lot of them don’t care.”
Trying to explain the Reds’ malaise, Lee May, one of the coaches, told Boswell: “Pete has a rapport with players that a lot of managers don’t have. Just by his presence he can get more out of some guys than anybody else could. We’ve had that taken away.”
“And Guerrero gets four days,” May groused. “He was only trying to kill the pitcher. It’s like me shooting a gun at you and I get off easy because I missed by a lot.”
Back in Rose’s office after the game, Boswell, describing Rose unironically as “an American sports institution,” captured another one of Rose’s self-conducted interviews. This one began with Guerrero and his bat.
“Pedro threw that bat as hard as he could. [He] missed by a lot. But, it’s hard to throw a bat straight. Maybe pine tar saved the pitcher there. No way anybody can compare what Guerrero and I did.”
“But [none of this is] about what I actually did,” Rose observed. “It’s like everything has been about making an example of me.”
You can understand why [Giamatti] would make an example of me.3 I’ve never given anything to the game in the last 25 years. I’ve been a constant troublemaker all my career. All I ever did was argue with umps and get thrown out all the time.
From all this, you’d think I was the worst guy who ever played.
“And they’ve taken this ‘make an example’ right down the line,” he went on. “Owners usually pay a manager’s fines. Well, nobody knows this, but [MLB Commissioner] Peter Ueberroth called Marge Schott right after I was fined and told her, ‘If you pay his fine, it will cost you 20 times that much.’”
The manager once again insisted he supported Giamatti’s focus on curbing ballpark rowdyism. “I know everything about it. I know how important it is.” Rose inadvertently further proved how much he knew about it by rattling off another list of his notable fan run-ins, this list somehow almost entirely different from the one he’d given Hal McCoy a few weeks earlier.
“I’m the first to admit I was wrong,” Rose said. “I’m sorry I did it. We watched replays. My part of the argument took one minute and five seconds from the time I left the dugout. Soon as I shoved Pallone, what did I do? I turned right around and went off the field. Quickest exit you’ll see.”
June 1
The next day, Pete Rose made it back to the field, Wrigley Field, in fact. Back in the dugout, he played down the significance of his reinstatement.
“I’ve been at the park every day, seen every pitch, and made out every lineup card,” Rose said. “The only difference is that I’ve carried binoculars and found out which press boxes serve the best cheeseburgers.”
The book on Tommy Helms’ managerial career could—for the moment—be closed, to Helms’ great relief. “You know, I’ve lost weight since I took over for Pete,” the interim manager told the Sporting News.
Understandable. Weight-loss is a key indicator of increased stress. What did it, Tommy? The burdens of leadership; a demanding owner; losing the clubhouse?
“The interviews after games run so long that I keep missing the post game [buffet] spread.”
The Reds, 3.5 games out of first place when Rose’s suspension began, were now six games out. They’d gone 12-15 under Helms, losing four straight and six of their last seven.
“I’m surprised I haven’t been fired,” Helms said.
Their manager back at his usual perch, the Reds did better in the second half, finishing in second place in the National League West for the fourth time in four seasons.
To mark his return, Marge Schott sent Rose a real-looking book, titled Everything I Know About Baseball, written by (the cover claimed) Dave Pallone. Inside, however, all of the pages were blank.
Schott would have been better served to send Rose a fresh copy of the rules governing personnel conduct, maybe earmarking Rule 21:
Misconduct, (d) Betting on Ball Games, Any player, umpire, or club, or league official, or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.
The manager’s vast reserves of Americana could not save him in 1989, when he accepted placement on the ineligible list for gambling on Reds games, an open-ended sanction which would turn out to be one of Bart Giamatti’s most consequential acts as a first-year commissioner before he died of a heart attack just days after announcing the sentence.
In a 2004 interview promoting his monetized confessional, My Prison Without Bars, Rose admitted to betting on baseball after spending 15 years denying it. He owned up to betting on the Reds in 1987, as alleged in the Dowd Report that led to his ban, but also in 1988, which was new information.
Rose said he bet on the Reds (always to win, he insisted) “sometimes four or five times a week” in 1988, adding a new facet through which to view his behavior on the night of April 30, after an umpire dramatically snatched victory away from the Reds in what otherwise would have been the game’s final moment.
June 25
Near the end of his first month back from his 30-day suspension, Pete Rose sent President Giamatti his recommendations for National League pitchers to include in the 1988 All-Star Game. The manager added a personal message at the bottom:
Thirty days is still too long
Reminded that Giamatti might be the next commissioner—sooner than later—the American Sports Institution was defiant.
I’ll still write to him that 30 days is too long. I’ll just be writing to a bigger man. And if he becomes President of the United States, I’ll still write that 30 days is too long.
The events of 1989 would open Rose’s eyes to the agonizing truth: 30 days was, in fact, no time at all.
Thank you for reading “65 Seconds.” We know that right now you have your choice of stories speculating about whether or not an MLB superstar may have gambled, and we’re honored you chose this one!
Since Pete brought it up (though giving himself too much credit, as was often the case…but we digress), next time, we’ll celebrate baseball’s Opening Week with the story of the 1970 home opener at Wrigley Field in Chicago, an occasion that, no matter what Pete says, really prompted the installation of the park’s unique outfield baskets.
Coming on April 1 (seriously): “The Goat Run”
We want to let Pete have his say but, oh man is this statement so ridiculously false. Rose’s ongoing war with outfield fans across America got more column space in the 1970s than some teams did.
One assumes (but can’t be quite sure, given the outcome) that Rose left the above anecdote out of his appeal remarks.
We added italics to these quotes to try and better capture in print what must have been a Tony-worthy performance by Rose, wasted on print journalism.
Thanks for these stories. I love them!
Pete’s an interesting character. Always gave 110% but never should’ve bet baseball. I think it’s long overdue… give the guy some slack now. It’s long enough.