One day after Pete Rose's reinstatement, Cincinnati celebrates his life and career

New York Times

15-05-2025

CINCINNATI — Wednesday night's celebration was far from the first Pete Rose Night held at the Cincinnati Reds' Great American Ball Park.
In 2016, Cincinnati hosted back-to-back events honoring Rose, inducting him into the team's Hall of Fame and retiring his number the following day. The next year, the team dedicated a statue to Rose outside the stadium and brought him back in front of another sell-out crowd.
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A total of 43,585 fans came to the stadium for a game against the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday to honor the life and achievements of Rose, baseball's all-time hits leader, who died last September at age 83. But this particular Pete Rose Night felt different — and not just because Rose wasn't there.
In the wake of Commissioner Rob Manfred's announcement Tuesday that 'permanent ineligibility ends upon the passing of the disciplined individual,' Rose, who accepted a lifetime ban from baseball in 1989 for gambling, was removed from MLB's permanently ineligible list and reinstated. For the first time in the ballpark's 22-year history, the specter of Rose's banishment from the game he championed was gone.
For years, even during lean times for the Reds, Rose could always bring a crowd. In 2016, when Rose was inducted into the Reds' Hall of Fame and his number was retired and in 2017 when his statue was dedicated, the franchise was in a rebuilding phase, losing 94 games in each of those seasons.
Wednesday was no different, with the team recording just its second sell-out of the season. Despite the Reds falling for the second night in a row to a White Sox team that lost 29 of its first 41 games, Cincinnati recorded its largest crowd in stadium history for a non-Opening Day weekday game.
'You could definitely feel the love that Cincinnati had for Pete and the way he played the game,' said Reds starter Nick Lodolo.
Rose's No. 14 was everywhere, from the replica jerseys handed out to each of the fans who came through the gates, to the patch on the Reds' uniform, a black tarp with the number 14 over the mound during batting practice, a 14-second long moment of silence before the national anthem, which was performed by 14 students from Rose's alma mater, Western Hills High School, down to the 7:14 p.m. start time. The game itself was played on May 14.
'In Pete, we saw an embodiment of Cincinnati,' said Reds public address announcer Joe Zerhusen in a recorded video highlighting Rose's accomplishments. 'In Pete, we saw ourselves.'
In between the first-base line and the home dugout at GABP, long-time Reds radio play-by-play announcer Marty Brennaman, a friend of Rose's, held a question-and-answer session with Rose's Big Red Machine teammate George Foster, former Reds outfielder Eric Davis who played with and for Rose and Hall of Famer and Cincinnati native Barry Larkin, who made his big-league debut under Rose.
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Brennaman fed the crowd, sharing stories about Rose on the field and in the dugout. He teed Foster up to tell the story of how Rose told manager Sparky Anderson to relax following the team's Game 6 loss to the Boston Red Sox in the 1975 World Series.
'He tried to calm Sparky down, and it turned out we won the seventh game,' Foster said to cheers.
Larkin told the story of having flight delays from the Reds' Triple-A home in Denver to Cincinnati for his debut in 1986 and arriving late to his first day in the big leagues. Larkin arrived at Riverfront Stadium before his bags did and pinch-hit that night using Rose's bat and spikes and Davis' batting gloves.
'After the game, I was going to take that bat and those cleats home with me, but he met me at the door and told me to give them back,' said Larkin, who was raised in Cincinnati like Rose. Despite that, Larkin said Rose helped him deal with the pressure of playing for his hometown team.
'He talked to me about the responsibilities of being a Cincinnatian and representing the city,' Larkin said.
Larkin and Davis credited Rose the manager for much of the success the team had after Rose was banished from baseball. Davis said with Rose, everything was about winning. He didn't care about the age of a player, just if he could play.
'In 1986, we broke camp with five rookies, at that time that was unheard of and that was the start of what we ended up doing by winning the World Series in 1990,' Davis said.
Earlier that day, the city of Cincinnati, in conjunction with the Reds, dedicated a ballfield in Boldface Park — where Rose used to play as a child — in Rose's name. The dedication of a park, statue, plaque or anything else for Rose will draw a crowd in Cincinnati. While Rose's legacy may be considered complicated anywhere else, here it is less so.
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Amid a constant rain that dissipated for the game later in the day, TV cameras, reporters, Cincinnati's vice mayor, Reds representatives and members of the Rose family, including his daughter Fawn, sons Pete Jr. and Tyler, and several grandchildren, mixed with local residents under the stone and concrete pavilion that has long been the defining feature of Boldface Park to escape the weather and honor Rose. The audience was such that nobody paused or offered a rebuttal when multiple speakers referred to Rose as the greatest player in baseball history, an opinion that would get pushback anywhere outside the 513 area code.
Less than 24 hours earlier, Fawn Rose was in Seattle getting ready to board a plane to Cincinnati when she got a call from family lawyer Jeffery Lenkov informing her of Manfred's decision, effectively renewing Rose's Hall of Fame hopes. The debate over Rose's place in Cooperstown is now more than a hypothetical. Rose's case won't be heard for more than two years, but he will have a chance.
As Fawn stood at the podium on the field her father grew up playing on, she spoke about what the day meant to her and her family.
'My dad did bring Petey and I down here when we were kids, so we knew the whole history of what this meant to him as a kid growing up,' Fawn said.
Phil Castellini, the Cincinnati Reds' president and Chief Executive Officer, spoke at Boldface Park and said that the evening's festivities at GABP were just a warmup for 'the real party' in Cooperstown, N.Y. He ended his speech by saying, 'God bless America. God Bless the Cincinnati Reds and God bless Pete Rose.'
The evening's festivities turned out to be lively on their own. Lines to the stadium's main entrance were still backed up at the gates even after first pitch. Seats that had sat empty since Opening Day were filled. One stadium worker noted late in the game that the night had been busier than Opening Day, the city's unofficial holiday.
That is the power of Pete Rose in Cincinnati.
'This city was my dad, as my brother said … Cincinnati baseball, it's in our DNA,' Fawn Rose said at Great American Ball Park. 'We're West Siders… This night is amazing. This is really for you all. You really are our extended family.'