D'Amato: On eve of Milwaukee trip, Pete Rose talks baseball

Records are made to be broken. Unless you’re talking about 4,256, the number of hits Pete Rose collected in his 24-year major-league career.

Considering only four others have topped 3,500 hits and the leading active player, 43-year-old Ichiro Suzuki, has 3,080, it’s safe to say Rose’s record isn’t falling anytime soon.

“Well, I kind of agree with you,” he said. “I’m going to go out on a limb here. It won’t be broken in my lifetime.”

The 76-year-old Rose laughed heartily. But he could live another 100 years and he’d still hold the record.

To break it, a player would have to average more than 200 hits a year for 21 years, avoid serious injury and remain driven enough to play hard every day up to and past his 40th birthday, despite having made hundreds of millions of dollars.

Superman could do it, maybe. But no mere mortal – no Clark Kent, Will Clark or Jeff Kent – is going to challenge 4,256. That record is etched in stone. Who’s going to come along with Rose’s combination of talent, health and ambition?

“When I played, if I took 10, 15 games off (in a season), I wasn’t going to get 200 hits,” he said. “I wasn’t going to score 100 runs. I wasn’t going to get 40 doubles. I got pissed when (Reds manager) Sparky (Anderson) took me out of the lineup.

“My first four years in Philadelphia, I did not miss a game. I was 38, 39, 40 and 41 years old. Two of those years I played 163 games. I was a bad spectator at baseball. … In my own mind, I believe I was the most aggressive player ever to play, and I was the most unsatisfied player ever to play.”

Rose was calling from a mall in Las Vegas, where he signs autographs at a sports memorabilia store from noon to 4:30 p.m. daily. It fills a void, since he is banned for life from holding a job in baseball because he gambled on games while playing for and managing the Reds.

He will appear at Pop Con Milwaukee, a pop culture, comic, horror and sports nostalgia convention Saturday and Sunday at the Crown Plaza Hotel & Convention Center, 6401 S. 13th St. Rose will sign autographs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.

He agreed to do one interview with print media in advance of the show and spent 40 minutes on the phone with me. He was talkative, animated and funny. I’d ask a question and he’d talk for five minutes, jumping from subject to subject.

I kept steering him back to the hits record. The man holds the records for two-hit, three-hit, four-hit and five-hit games. Over his last 16 years, he never struck out more than 54 times in a season. He batted .286 at age 43. He had a .395 on-base percentage at 44. He stole three bases at 45.

“Most of the players I played with had more ability than me,” Rose said. “But I have the records.”

That’s because he approached every at-bat as if he were a UFC fighter walking into the cage. The batter’s box was his octagon. He was combative and pugnacious. He was arrogant and unapologetic. He played with his hair on fire, fueled by pride and purpose, but never steroids.

You know what else he never did?

“I don’t ever remember breaking a bat in a game,” he said. “I used the same bat in my 44-game hitting streak. Another thing I never did, I never fouled a ball off my shin or ankle. Never in my career.

"And I want someone to show me a tape of me popping up to the third baseman or first baseman in foul territory. I’m sure I did it in 15,000 at-bats, but show me a tape of it. Sure, I hit pop-ups that the shortstop or second baseman caught, but over by the dugout? Never.”

Rose said Houston’s Jose Altuve was the player today who most reminded him of himself and predicted Altuve would have a Hall of Fame career. But he agreed with pitchers who have said in recent weeks that the ball is juiced.

“When Altuve starts hitting 465-foot home runs, and the guy is 5-6 and 165 pounds … what is he, Mighty Mite?’ ” Rose said. “As a former player and a guy who loves the game, seven homers in one (World Series) game? I mean, come on. I agree with some of the pitchers. There’s something going on with the ball.”

Finally, we touched on the touchy subject: Rose’s ineligibility for the Hall of Fame. Of course, he belongs. He gambled on baseball but didn’t do anything to give himself a competitive advantage on the field.

Amphetamines?

“They don’t help you as a player,” Rose said. “They don’t make you faster or stronger. They’re very similar to drinking three cups of coffee before a game. They’re like Red Bull.”

Rose earned every one of his 4,256 hits. Unfortunately, he also bet on baseball games.

“I’m the one that screwed up and I’m the one that paid the consequences,” he said. “However, we live in America and most guys are given a second chance. That’s not me in baseball. I’ll probably never get a second chance. I can tell you this: I wouldn’t need a third chance.”

For a premium, Rose will add to his autograph on a baseball the inscription, “Sorry I bet on baseball.” Does he have to swallow some pride every time he writes those words?

“No,” he said, “because that’s the truest statement I ever wrote on a ball.”