The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball by Keith O’Brien

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball by Keith O'Brien https://amzn.to/3TzbziA A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • From New York Times bestselling author Keith O'Brien, a captivating chronicle of the incredible story of one of America’s most iconic, charismatic, and still polarizing figures—baseball immortal Pete Rose—and an exquisite cultural history of baseball and America in the second half of the twentieth century “Baseball biography at its best. With Charlie Hustle, Pete Rose finally gets the book he deserves, and baseball fans get the book we’ve been craving, a hard-hitting, beautifully-written tale that will stand for years to come as the definitive account of one of the most fascinating figures in American sports history.”—Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author of King: A Life Pete Rose is a legend. A baseball god. He compiled more hits than anyone in the history of baseball, a record he set decades ago that still stands today. He was a working-class white guy from Cincinnati who made it; less talented than tough, and rough around the edges. He was everything that America wanted and needed him to be, the American dream personified, until he wasn’t. In the 1980s, Pete Rose came to be at the center of one of the biggest scandals in baseball history. He kept secrets, ran with bookies, took on massive gambling debts, and he was magnificently, publicly cast out for betting on baseball and lying about it. The revelations that followed ruined him, changed life in Cincinnati, and forever altered the game. Charlie Hustle tells the full story of one of America’s most epic tragedies—the rise and fall of Pete Rose. Drawing on firsthand interviews with Rose himself and with his associates, as well as on investigators' reports, FBI and court records, archives, a mountain of press coverage, Keith O’Brien chronicles how Rose fell so far from being America’s “great white hope.” It is Pete Rose as we've never seen him before. This is no ordinary sport biography, but cultural history at its finest. What O’Brien shows is that while Pete Rose didn’t change, America and baseball did. This is the story of that change. About the author The New York Times Book Review has hailed Keith O’Brien for his “keen reportorial eye” and “lyrical” writing style. He has written two books, been a finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting, and contributed to National Public Radio for more than a decade. O’Brien’s radio stories have appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition, as well as Marketplace, Here & Now, Only a Game, and This American Life. He has also written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Politico, Slate, Esquire.com, and the Oxford American, among others. He is a former staff writer for both the Boston Globe and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. As a newspaper reporter, he won multiple awards, including the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. He was born in Cincinnati and graduated from Northwestern University.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. The Iron Lady sings it. That makes it official. I'm so glad I don't have to do it after 14 years and we just let her handle the business.

As always, we have the most amazing authors, minds, Pulitzer Prize winners, New York Times bestsellers, billionaires, CEOs, White House presidents, advisors, all the brilliant people on the show today. And we're going to be talking about something that I was a fan of when i was growing up watching pete rose i don't think i don't know if i can claim that anybody loved the game more than him but certainly he played it like he did maybe that's the right way to say it we'll find out from our amazing author we have on his newest book has just come out it's charlie hustle the rise and fall of pete rose and the last glory days of baseball and actually march 26 2024 here in a few more days it'll be out keith o'brien joins us on the show today we'll be talking to him about his amazing book he is a new york times best-selling author of paradise falls

fly girls and outside shot a finalist for the Penn ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, an award-winning journalist. He's written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Politico, and his stories have also appeared in National Public Radio and This American Life. And he lives in New Hampshire. I mean, that's the peak of his whole bio right there. He lives in New Hampshire. So there you go.

Welcome to the show, Keith. How are you? Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. Really appreciate it. Honored to have you. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Sure. My website is real simple. It's just KeithOB.com. You can follow me on Twitter by that same handle, KeithOB, or on Instagram at O'Brien's Story.

There you go. Tell us about this unknown Pete Rose guy no one has ever heard of and give us a 30,000 overview of your book. Sure. So of course, I think most people of a certain age will have heard about Pete Rose. He's one of our great baseball legends. And also I think just objectively, one of the most fascinating, complex, and controversial athletes of the past 100 years. Pete Rose climbs to the top of the baseball mountain. He is the all-time baseball hit king, the hit leader still of 40 years after he stopped playing. But Pete Rose loses it all in an epic gambling scandal in 1989 and is banished from the game for betting on baseball and betting on his own team, the Cincinnati Reds. And, you know, I wanted to go back and tell that story for a couple reasons,

Chris. You know, for one thing, what I was really trying to capture here was the human story. Yes, Pete Rose is a baseball player, but for me, it's almost immaterial. You know, what's most interesting to me about his story is this rise and this fall. It is really, I think, a Greek tragedy that just happened to play out on an American baseball field. And the other reason why I wanted to explore it again now, Chris, is in the past six years, we have seen a cultural shift in America that no one expected. Gambling and sports gambling in particular is now legal in most states. Last year in America, we legally wagered $120 billion on sports just legally. And while that change doesn't mean that nowadays a player like Pete Rose could bet on his own team to win, it doesn't. That's still disallowed by Major League Baseball for all the obvious reasons. It does raise some pretty interesting questions. And so I thought, what better time to go back and explore one of our

most notorious gamblers than now? There you go. And you know, Pete Rose, I was still watching baseball back then as a kid. I was a big Dodgers fan, but I love the Oakland A's and I can't remember the gentleman on the Oakland A's that I used to love. What, Reggie Jackson? Sure, Reggie Jackson, the 70s. Absolutely. I was a big fan of Tommy the Sorter, of course, was just so fun to watch with the Dodgers. But I grew up a Dodgers fan, and he's recently run for Senate. Steve Garvey. Steve Garvey.

I was a huge Steve Garvey. I love Steve Garvey. But Pete Rose, you tuned in to watch Pete Rose. You wanted to see that slide that he would always do in the base. And he was such a hustler, too, around the bases. But you just got to say, it was like watching Michael Jordan with that tongue hanging out of his mouth as he's flying through the air and defying gravity.

And it just captured a love of the game that, you know, there's a lot of great players out there, but there's something that goes like next level with certain players. And I think Pete Rose was that, and I think a lot of great players out there, but there's something that goes next level with certain players. And I think Pete Rose was that, and I think a lot of people felt that. You're absolutely right. I mean, people gravitated to him for all the reasons why you mentioned. He really was, quite frankly, an ordinary athlete. I write in my book, Charlie Hustle, that he was, I think, arguably our most ordinary extraordinary athlete.

He came from a working class neighborhood on the west side of Cincinnati. He was never the best player on his youth baseball teams all the way through high school. He was small. He had no obvious talents so there's no reason why this man you know should have you know made the major leagues much less you know become baseball's all-time hit leader and and he knew this you know from a young age pete did and you know he he knew that to make it, that frankly, just to survive, that he had to play harder than the next guy. And, you know, there he was, you know, sprinting down to first base on a walk. There he was, you know, barreling into second base in meaningless games to break up double plays.

There he was sliding head first into bases this this was you know part of his persona and and he and he wore that persona you know in in every part of his life for good or for ill there you go yeah i mean you just see in the way he played i mean there's there's i can't think of the ravens running back that i used to love to watch and normally because he was fast as hell. And then the other time is if he hit somebody, he'd knock the teeth out of them. So I love that. I'm a Raiders fan, so I'm used to, I like concussions and knocking people's teeth out.

But you could just tell the way he played the game. I mean, even though you weren't a Cincinnati fans thing, you're like, what? Oh, Pete Rose is on? Yeah, we're watching that game. You know, it's the same reason you turn into a NASCAR, to watch the cars crash or something. Yeah, you're right. And, you know, but that same persona that I mentioned before

and that thing that you loved and that fans loved, it propelled him to all this success onto the field and made him a star on the field. But I think my research and reporting shows that same persona, that same unwillingness to bend, that same belief that he will prevail. Pete was the eternal optimist. And that same unwillingness to be vulnerable, to be weak, hurts him off the field so that when he begins to

propel into gambling and into gambling addiction, again, I believe my research shows, he can't reckon with it. He can't be honest about it. And that inability to do so is ultimately what will doom him to failure. There you go. Ray Lewis was referencing earlier for the Ravens for that. So we're going to circle back to the book, but let's get to know you a little bit better. Tell us about your upbringing. What made you want to become a writer?

You've written multiple books. What made you want to write about sports? And what brought you to this story? You know, I probably wanted to write and gravitated to write from the time I was the time I was, you know, in middle school. And I certainly knew by college there was something that interested me. You know, you know, this story is something that's sort of imbued on me. You know, I was born also in Cincinnati and raised in Cincinnati. I was too young to remember the big red machine teams that were so dominant in the 1970s, the ones that Pete Rose played for and won World Series titles with.

But I'm in the wheelhouse for my love of baseball when Pete returns to Cincinnati from the Montreal Expos in 1984. I remember, as many Americans do who were alive at that time, exactly where I was in the night that he set the all-time hit record. And I remember that tumultuous year in 1989, you know, when he got himself embroiled in what was, until that point, you know, one of the most epic gambling scandals in American sports history. And, you know, if you were alive during that time, you know, you know that Pete Rose was almost, you know, sort of the backdrop of your life and in the way that many big stars are for us. And that was certainly true of anyone in Cincinnati. And, you know, that was one reason why

I was drawn to this story. You know, I know the neighborhood that Pete grew up in. I know guys like him. I went to school with guys like him. And I wanted to explore, you know, this narrative of this man who was bedeviled by his own flaws. There you go. And I was just thinking to myself, he was on the Wheaties box. Oh, yeah. It used to be like all the top people were on the Wheaties box, and some of them aren't men anymore, but one of them is.

But he was on the Wheaties box. And when you were a kid, you'd see that Wheaties box and when you were a kid you'd see that Wheaties box and you'd you know hey I want to be like Pete Rose I'm gonna eat some Wheaties you know it was a thing back then you know it was I don't know why they don't maybe they still do that on Wheaties boxes I don't know I don't eat Wheaties anymore probably for obvious reasons I don't know they do they do still do it but you know that you know again that that that thing that represented so much about our culture in the 1970s and 80s is now just one of a thousand things that represents something about our culture you know today you know it would be far more important for an athlete

to have a you know a viral uh a tweet or you know or a popular reel on Instagram than it would be to appear on the Wheaties box. Pete did, of course, in 1985. He was on that Wheaties box, as were every other iconic athlete in those days. And if you weren't a home brand name, a home recognized name, back, this is before big media know, big media where, you know, everyone's on social media and that's how you became a home, you know, everyone knew who you were. You're on the front

of the Wheaties box. It was kind of a thing back then. There's a lot of books on Pete Rose. What do you feel sets your book apart, et cetera, et cetera? You know? For Charlie Hustle, there are several things that sets it apart. Number one, Pete Rose has never spoken to an author for a book over which he did not have editorial control, which he did not for this one. And Pete did grant me 27 hours of interviews before he stopped calling me back, before he shut down. I also interviewed for this book many people who have never spoken before. Three different men who placed his bets on baseball granted interviews to me for this book, as did dozens and dozens of other people. And what I really wanted to do was sort of capture the full scope

of the Rose story and do it in a personal, intimate way. And, you know, I think for all of those reasons, this book is different. And every time my reporting sort of cracked open the door to a room, let's say, that we had never seen before, you know, I liked to linger in that room. And so there are scenes, stories, moments, important ones that would ultimately shape this man that, you know, are in this book for the first time. And those are the stories you love, the things that shape a person, you know that that make them who they are that make them three-dimensional because a lot of times we make our heroes heroes two-dimensional and and and they're you know not everyone's complex being and we all have dichotomies and and conflicts and we're none of us are perfect beings i think we know what happened to the last perfect being and so i mean being able to tell these stories behind and you know the things as you mentioned making him a personal great also those flaws are exposed and sometimes that's that's how that's how

it goes you you break down you get into some of the fbi and court records investigative reports on him and everything else. How do you, I guess you play out in the book, this weirdness of how is it fair or how do you sell, do you sell that he should be in the Hall of Fame, that he should be overturned, or how do you approach that? Yeah, I want to make clear, you know, that one thing that makes this book different from most that have come before is I'm not here to take sides. I'm not here to make an argument for Pete Rose or against Pete Rose. This isn't about his Hall of Fame status. That's not going to be on the ballot at the hall of fame in Cooperstown anytime soon, maybe ever. It's a hypothetical built on a mountain of hypotheticals. And in fact, the whole question about his hall of fame status is really just sort of addressed in, in effectively the, the final act of the book, you know, the, the book doesn't take sides on that. And, and, and that was intentional because one thing I learned early on

as a journalist is, you know, don't tell people how to feel. Don't tell people, you know, what happened. Show them what happened. And then people can figure out on their own how to feel. And, you know, that's what I hope this book will do is, you know, give folks a prism to look at Pete Rose through, you know, through, you know, historical interviews, interviews with people who were there, interviews with Pete Rose himself, documents, federal court documents and voluminous investigative documents. And then they can make up their own minds about about what they think about pete rose do you feel that pete rose now in your discussions with him 27 hours that's

pretty awesome do you feel he recognizes some of the fallacies and shortcomings of his personality at the time you know fame fame is a hard thing to ride and of course your desire for it and of course addiction addiction is addiction it's it's course, addiction. Addiction is addiction. It's a tough road if you have addictive personality. Has he come to Jesus with it? Does he recognize it? How does he feel these days? Yeah, that's a big sweeping question.

You know, Pete, you know, sometimes, like a lot of famous people in particular, doesn't always have the best 30,000 foot view of himself. You know, he believes that he apologized for his mistakes 20 years ago. He believes that the world should have moved on 20 years ago. And, you know, he's right about that in a, in a certain way. He did write a book in 2004 in which he finally, after 15 years of lying, 15 years of lying, he, he, he, he came clean to a point and, and admitted that he had bet on baseball and he had bet on the Reds. But, you know, it, that memoir is a very shallow, you know, superficial version of the truth, in my opinion, you know, and so my goal as I sat with Pete at

times was to get him to talk about the darkness. Because again, you know know if you're going to place bets on baseball and bets on your own team which are decisions that pete rose and any other ball player would have known could get him banned for life then you have got a problem yeah and you know pete's way of addressing it you know is to say i i didn't think i would get caught. I think that's everyone's thing that's in jail right now. Right, right. And there's the hubris that's involved. And by the way, you know, hubris is often at the core of many historical mistakes, both by humans and nations and government.

It is often the biggest flaw one can have. So his hubris makes him believe that he's not going to get caught. Of course he does. And this is a critical moment. It's February 1989. He's the player manager now of the Cincinnati Reds. He's no longer a player. He's just the manager of the Cincinnati Reds in 1989. And he's called to New York by the outgoing commissioner, Peter Uberoff, the incoming commissioner and current National League president, Bart Giamatti, and Giamatti's deputy and close friend, Faye Vincent. And these men have a meeting with Pete Rose in a boardroom next to Yubarath's office. And the whole purpose of the meeting is just to ask Rose a simple question, which is Major League Baseball has heard at this time that he is betting on

baseball and they want to know if it's true. And Pete lies that day. And this is not part of the book, but it does help, I think, offer perspective. The two biggest challenges to any gambling addict getting help are documented in peer review research. The first one is shame. Shame is the first one. And second is indebtedness, being in debt. And I believe that Pete had both of those things. I know that Pete was in debt in 1989 and had been to bookies for many, many years. The fact that he can't be honest there, we can say is a character flaw, and it certainly is, and it will cost him. But I think it's also the sign of an addict. And later, this comes up again, because two months later, Major League Baseball has now conducted its own investigation with a former

Justice Department prosecutor leading the way, a man who has put congressmen and mobsters under indictments. This man, John Dowd, would say that the Pete Rose case was the easiest one he ever prosecuted. And in eight weeks, he unravels years and years of lies. And he goes to a second meeting with Pete Rose, this time a legal deposition. And Bart Giamatti, who's now the commissioner of baseball, instructs John Dowd that he's not to play gotcha with Pete. He's not to surprise him with anything. Bart Giamatti instructs John Dowd to show him everything, show him the preponderance of the evidence they have gathered and the hope and maybe even the belief was that Pete Rose would see, oh my God, they've got everything. They've got

bank records and phone records and my bookie and my former runner statements, you know, implicating me in gambling on baseball. Maybe he should have at that point come clean and told the truth. He still can't do it. He still can't do it. And it will be then 15 more years before he can. Do you think, I mean, would they, you think the penalty might have been less? Do you delve into that if he just admitted

to it? Maybe they could have gotten him help or I don't know. I don't know if that was even an option. In the mid-1980s, around 1983-84, there was a different scandal in baseball, smaller, but a scandalous nonetheless, and it involved cocaine. Several players, prominent ones, including former MVPs, had been supplied with cocaine by a dealer in Pittsburgh. And the players themselves were not on trial for anything, but the dealer was. And they were summoned to testify in court. And so it's really bad for baseball. It's often referred to as the Pittsburgh cocaine trials. And so the commissioner at the time is Peter Uberoth, who will still be there five years later in the room with Giamatti and Vincent and Rose. And Uberoth has to figure out,

how do I handle this? How do I punish or not punish these guys who are now testifying in court that they have been supplied with cocaine, in some cases, you know, for years. And Uberoth ultimately decides that no one's going to be suspended. No one's going to be banned for life. You know, They've paid a price publicly with the trial. And instead of suspensions and banishments, each of them are asked to give a portion of their salary to drug treatment programs, and they move on. And I do believe, and this isn't just my belief, my research and reporting shows that if Pete Rose comes to that meeting in February 1989 and is honest with you, Barath and Giamatti and Vincent, it is different. Now, does that mean he wouldn't have faced any kind of punishment? No, I don't think so. He still would have been punished in some way. But one thing we have forgotten in the last 35 years, especially as Pete Rose has become a caricature of himself, is that this was bad for baseball in 1989.

This wasn't a good thing. Pete Rose was one of our iconic heroes. And so for that reason alone, baseball would have done everything it could to save Pete Rose. And by the way, Chris, we find ourselves in that very situation perhaps right now. I mean, just yesterday, late yesterday, the Los Angeles Dodgers fired the longtime interpreter of Joe Hayotani, who is not just Major League Baseball's highest paid player. He is the world's most famous baseball player. it has been learned that Shohei Ohtani and the interpreter are connected in some way to a bookmaker, a bookie, and a legal bookie in Southern California. And specifically, just yesterday, Shohei Ohtani's lawyers released a statement saying that accusing his interpreter of massive theft of money in order to pay off, allegedly, pay off this bookie.

And here we are again. The world has changed. Gambling is legal. It's everywhere. And yet, illegal bookies still operate in the shadows. And 35 years after Pete Rose, you know, was banned for his sins, we have yet another gambling scandal. And just like the Rose scandal in 1989, no matter what, no matter what Otani did or didn't know, this is also bad for baseball. There you go. I mean, yeah, you have all these, I mean, I was really surprised, you know, the NFL was so resistant to bring a team to like the Raiders to Vegas because of the gambling thing. And you're just like, there's still a lot of gambling going on. I don't really think we're the problem, but you know, the DraftKings and FanDuel and all these things,

I mean, just the embrace of it, it's just been kind of insane and i i lived in vegas for i've lived in vegas now for 20 25 years and here we have a lot of gamblers and it's reported it's like 15 percent of people that have gambling addictions or addictions problems here but i think it's like 30 maybe 25 it might be worse now with all the with all the legalization of it but i've known a lot of those people that have addiction problems i've known people that have alcohol addiction problems too that drove them to their death but the the thing with gambling is it doesn't kill you it it you know like heroin or you know cocaine or whatever your your drug is that you're doing

or alcohol you'll live for a long time and you'll you'll you'll you'll do all the wrong things and there is shame to it and there is denial. And I've, I've had friends that I can't have be friends with anymore, but they struggle. And so I kind of understand Pete Rose's mentality with the, you know, batting with addiction, you know, maybe in a woke sort of society that we're in now where we're all like, we should forgive people for their trauma and their you know their issues i mean it seems like it seems like he was you know at the time okay you know drop the band hammer but you know i there's a point now i think where you can say you suffer enough we understand mental health and addiction maybe a little bit more online gambling is here you know let's let the

guy in the hall of fame i mean at least put him on the on the dealio let's not give him a lifetime ban and the other thing i wanted to get to is i think you're right you know you put in the last glory days of baseball his banning and enclosure out of the game was one of the things that drove me from baseball it was probably one of the last straws other than i think the strike was the last straw or that strike was back then that drove 1994 yeah yeah and but but not seeing him you know playing the game being involved it it killed a hero basically what it did whether it's appropriate or not you know as you talk about your book it still killed a hero and it took away the the glory of the game the love of the game you know

everyone looked up to him and and I think it painted itself onto baseball. Maybe they're not realizing that. It tarnished baseball's image. Maybe not hitting him so harshly would have tarnished it less. I don't know. But it affected my watching of the game. You know, Pete's choices that he made in that moment in 1989 certainly affected the punishment he received.

But I will agree with you on this. You know, for me, it's not just that Pete is a fault line in baseball. I think he's a fault line in American sports. 1989, his banishment in August 1989, I believe is a fault line in baseball. I think he's a fault line in American sports. 1989, his banishment in August 1989, I believe is a fault line in American sports. It sort of divides the era of heroes from the era of the cheaters. I think everything that comes after that, we're always asking, is it real? Is it true? What know, what are they taking? What are they using? And, and, you know, I think there's some irony that in the summer of 1989, when Pete

Rose was being investigated for gambling on the game, which was the right choice to make, you know, players are already injecting themselves with steroids and there's no investigation happening whatsoever. And that wave of players that is coming, taking steroids and then other even more efficient performance enhancing drugs will completely destroy the statistics and the records that meant so much to baseball and meant so much to history. It will make a mockery of many of those numbers. And I think you can draw a straight line from all of that, Chris, to the rule changes that Major League Baseball just made last year in order to bring more movement back into the game, in order to bring more base hits back into the game,

in order to stop players from trying to swing for a home run every time because when they fail, they're striking out, and that's boring. For all of those reasons, I do think, you know, Pete Rose in 1989 is a fault line. And that's just another reason, you know, why I wanted to write Charlie Hustle. There you go. And I agree with you. You know, you look at how, and maybe Pete Rose's example and how it hurt baseball with such a harsh ban. It contributed to, you know, Michael Jordan, what was it?

He had to go two years and play baseball or something. Who am Michael Jordan, what was it, he had to go two years and play baseball or something? Who am I thinking of that was in basketball that had to go, that had to go, it was a semi, I don't remember who. Michael Jordan went and played baseball and there's lots of rumors and conspiracy theories about why, but nothing proven on that.

Yeah, it seemed like it was kind of a penalty for being caught for gambling. And then I think there was a couple other people that had to do that, either in basketball or, I don't know, maybe football. Was it football? I don't know. But it seemed like, you know, other people got off. I mean, certainly Michael Jordan, you know, got off on gambling.

But, yeah, the doping era of, I mean, the doping era, I think, was the most, to me, that was worse than the gambling thing that Pete Rose did because those guys were totally faking it. The Lance Armstrongs and all those guys with an asterisk that I guess maybe they'll end up in the Hall of Fame if they're not there already in baseball. Once you found out that they were juicing and cheating, you're just like, how is that worse than Pete Rose?

I think it's hard to compare the two. Both are obviously wrong. If you had 15 or 20, or let's just say 50% of the league, you know, placing bets on games, that's also incredibly corrosive. But I agree with you, you know, you know you know i think you know it's clear that despite what pete rose did was wrong and incredibly wrong for all the reasons we've discussed you know the the steroid era did far more damage to the game of baseball in my opinion than than the pete rose gambling scandal did and a lot of those guys are still revered, too, and celebrated. And you're just kind of like, this isn't too fair. So anything more you want to tease out in the book before we go? Anything we wanted to cover that you wanted to tease out to get people to pick it up?

No, I appreciate the time, Chris. The book comes out on Tuesday, March 26th. It's available for pre-order right now wherever you can buy books. And I'm just so grateful for the conversation. Thanks so much. Thank you. Has anyone ever done a survey of what most Americans feel that he should be allowed in the Hall of Fame? At the very least, he's paid his due. There've been many surveys done over the years. And as time has gone on, the surveys and the answers have changed. The bottom line is the opinion is split. I mean,

Pete is almost like a political party now. When you're with them, you're with them. And if you're against him, you're against him. And that has borne out to be true over all these many decades. But I will say, whether you love Pete Rose or you hate Pete Rose, whether you think he should be in the Hall of Fame, whether you think he's earned every bit of his life in the hinterlands of his sport and should remain there, I think this is an important book that captures who he is and what happened during this window of time when baseball still did mean so much here in America? It did. And I think it hurt the game.

It drove me for the game. I know that personally. That and a few other things. But I remember about 10 years ago, I was in Vegas. And I was up in the northwest part where it was like the end of the earth of when the city meets the desert going up to the alien highway. And there was a little baseball shop that just opened up a card shop or comic shop i don't know what it was but they had pete rose there to sign autographs and they had a big banner they put up and he was signing autographs for

either 35 or 50 bucks and i remember seeing it disappointed going jesus i mean p Pete Rose 50 bucks for an autograph I mean that that's just seems like a crime but it probably and you know it's not in the middle of nowhere too and I'm like geez wow this I mean he's definitely paid a price I mean I think anybody could look at and say he's paid a price come on let's let's you know let's let's accept people that have addiction problems I mean at least at least he earned all of the stuff that he did. You know, he wasn't juicing stuff. So thank you for coming on the show. We really appreciate it, Keith.

Thank you, Chris, for having me. It was my pleasure. There you go. Give us your dot coms. We want people to find you on the interwebs. Yeah, yeah. Again, my website is KeithOB.com. I'm on Twitter at the same handle, KeithOB.

And you can follow me on Instagram at O'BrienStory. There you go. Thanks for coming on. Thanks to Moranis for tuning in. Order the book wherever fine books are sold. You pre-order it now for March 26, 2024. Charlie Hustle, The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose,

and The Last Glory Days of Baseball. And let's get him back in the Hall of Fame, please, people. I mean, let's just fix it. There you go. Thanks, my friends, for tuning in. Be sure to go to goodreads.com, Forges, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com,

Forges, Chris Foss, and Chris Foss1, the TikTokity. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. And that should have a sound.