pitcher Jim O’Toole half a century later. He was the lefty who would take the ball for Cincinnati on April 8. “You could feel the buildup and the hoopla and then the game itself came and it felt like such a big deal, so much energy. Especially when it was a nice enough day like we had in ’63. Days like that, Opening Day felt like the World Series.”
The Reds were coming up from Tampa now, playing the last of their spring training games along the way, traveling through the South and all its seething righteousness from all sides in the Civil Rights struggle. James Meredith had been in school at Ole Miss for just half a year, and still fresh for the country were the images of the federal marshals who escorted him there, and the riots surrounding his enrollment. A determined unrest was gathering strength in Birmingham. John F. Kennedy was 26 months into his term, and the national intelligence agencies were preparing for him a report entitled Prospects in South Vietnam . You could make long-distance calls direct, now, from your own home, and you could take your Polaroid pictures in color. People had begun to hear on the radio the breakthrough songs of Bob Dylan.
There had been professional baseball in Cincinnati for 94 years, longer than anywhere else. This was the greatest baseball town in the world.
And if Hutchinson was predicting first place for his team, buoyed to optimism by the pitching and the power (Frank Robinson!), and the 98 games the Reds had won the year before, he was inspired too by another player, an unpolished rookie playing second base. Hutch talked about the kid all spring, about how even with only a few years in the low minors behind him he already had some serious big league sass about him. The kid played baseball harder than anyone Hutch had ever seen. And he could really hit. Reds’ owner William DeWitt came down and after watching the kid on the field for a couple of days, he had no uncertainty: “When he makes it, fans from all over the country will want to come out and see him play,” he said. “He loves to play baseball and the best part about it is his ability. A fellow like this can spark an entire ballclub.”
Some of the fans in Cincinnati already knew about the kid, of course, and some knew him as one of their own, a mulish scrapper out of Western Hills High, raised down around Delhi Township, hard by the Ohio. West Siders knew who the kid’s father was too, a tough and square-jawed semi-pro footballer, a star of renown in the tavern leagues. By the time the Reds broke camp the kid already had a nickname, “Charlie Hustle,” pinned on him with an air of derision by—and how’s this for a stamp upon a player?—a couple of Yankees named Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford.
Still, he was only 21 years old, and he had plenty of rough edges to his game. The Cincinnati batting coach, Dick Sisler, didn’t like the hitch in the kid’s swing or the way he held the bat so close to his ear. Maybe he needed another year down in the minors somewhere—in San Diego, say, or Rocky Mount. No. Not on Hutch’s watch. A few days into April word went out that the Reds had made their final roster cuts for the season. And the kid was on the team. As it said so plainly in the morning Cincinnati Post : “The 28 players, the limit for Opening Day, include Pete Rose.”
----
NINETEEN-SIXTY-THREE WAS by no reckoning an ordinary year in the history and progress of America, neither ordinary in hindsight, nor in the days in which it unfolded—a fact that was clear long before the sudden blow and deep darkness of Nov. 22 when John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas. During April of ’63, as Rose made his way through his first month in the major leagues, slumping and then rebounding at the plate, and with his conspicuous moxie inspiring already much ardor among the fans (and some distaste among the players), the nation shook, reverberating out from Birmingham, where the civil rights movement was rumbling in
The Reds were coming up from Tampa now, playing the last of their spring training games along the way, traveling through the South and all its seething righteousness from all sides in the Civil Rights struggle. James Meredith had been in school at Ole Miss for just half a year, and still fresh for the country were the images of the federal marshals who escorted him there, and the riots surrounding his enrollment. A determined unrest was gathering strength in Birmingham. John F. Kennedy was 26 months into his term, and the national intelligence agencies were preparing for him a report entitled Prospects in South Vietnam . You could make long-distance calls direct, now, from your own home, and you could take your Polaroid pictures in color. People had begun to hear on the radio the breakthrough songs of Bob Dylan.
There had been professional baseball in Cincinnati for 94 years, longer than anywhere else. This was the greatest baseball town in the world.
And if Hutchinson was predicting first place for his team, buoyed to optimism by the pitching and the power (Frank Robinson!), and the 98 games the Reds had won the year before, he was inspired too by another player, an unpolished rookie playing second base. Hutch talked about the kid all spring, about how even with only a few years in the low minors behind him he already had some serious big league sass about him. The kid played baseball harder than anyone Hutch had ever seen. And he could really hit. Reds’ owner William DeWitt came down and after watching the kid on the field for a couple of days, he had no uncertainty: “When he makes it, fans from all over the country will want to come out and see him play,” he said. “He loves to play baseball and the best part about it is his ability. A fellow like this can spark an entire ballclub.”
Some of the fans in Cincinnati already knew about the kid, of course, and some knew him as one of their own, a mulish scrapper out of Western Hills High, raised down around Delhi Township, hard by the Ohio. West Siders knew who the kid’s father was too, a tough and square-jawed semi-pro footballer, a star of renown in the tavern leagues. By the time the Reds broke camp the kid already had a nickname, “Charlie Hustle,” pinned on him with an air of derision by—and how’s this for a stamp upon a player?—a couple of Yankees named Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford.
Still, he was only 21 years old, and he had plenty of rough edges to his game. The Cincinnati batting coach, Dick Sisler, didn’t like the hitch in the kid’s swing or the way he held the bat so close to his ear. Maybe he needed another year down in the minors somewhere—in San Diego, say, or Rocky Mount. No. Not on Hutch’s watch. A few days into April word went out that the Reds had made their final roster cuts for the season. And the kid was on the team. As it said so plainly in the morning Cincinnati Post : “The 28 players, the limit for Opening Day, include Pete Rose.”
----
NINETEEN-SIXTY-THREE WAS by no reckoning an ordinary year in the history and progress of America, neither ordinary in hindsight, nor in the days in which it unfolded—a fact that was clear long before the sudden blow and deep darkness of Nov. 22 when John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas. During April of ’63, as Rose made his way through his first month in the major leagues, slumping and then rebounding at the plate, and with his conspicuous moxie inspiring already much ardor among the fans (and some distaste among the players), the nation shook, reverberating out from Birmingham, where the civil rights movement was rumbling in
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