Editor’s Note: The Playboy Interview with Pete Rose first appeared in the May 2000 issue of Playboy. What follows is the intro to that interview. To read the full story, check out the Playboy magazine archives.
Pete Rose was a line drive-hitting, headfirst-sliding Cincinnati Reds rookie in 1963, when the team’s veterans hung the derisive nickname Charlie Hustle on his cocky crewcut head. He has been pissing off people ever since. Every fan knows Rose’s claim to fame: 4256 base hits, 67 more than Ty Cobb had. But even nonfans know his claim to shame: the charge that he bet on baseball games while managing the Reds. That’s what keeps Rose out of the Hall of Fame and keeps him hustling to defend his name even as he sells it to anybody willing to ante up and get in line: Get your red-hot autographed bats, balls, cards, caps, jerseys and posters!
Rose’s enemies include baseball commissioner Bud Selig, former commissioner Fay Vincent and baseball inquisitors John Dowd (the lawyer whose report on Rose’s gambling helped get the Hit King exiled in 1989) and Jim Gray, whose World Series Rose-grilling made headlines ten years later. But if his shit list is long, it’s a Post-it note compared with the roster of Rose fans who flock to his autograph signings or add their names to the cyberscroll at sportcut.com, the website that set an Internet record for hits for a sports site on the day Rose’s Hall of Fame petition appeared there. “One thing about Pete,” says an old National League rival who once duked it out with him, “he’s overcome his shyness.”
Check out the archives for the rest of Pete Rose’s Playboy Interview.