No one in the history of Major League Baseball has had more hits than Pete Rose. Arguably, no one in the history of the sport has had a more dramatic fall from grace than Rose; in 1989 he accepted a lifetime ban from the game under a cloud of suspicion about his gambling addiction. Charlie Hustle and the case of Pete Rosea new four-part documentary miniseries on MAX, looks at the long career and sad downfall of MLB’s all-time hits leader.
Charlie Hustle and the Pete Rose AffairSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening shot: A black screen, with a quote from early 20th-century sports columnist Ring Lardner: “The only real happiness a baseball player has is when he’s playing a baseball game and he accomplishes something he didn’t think he could do.” We then cut to wintery shots of the Cincinnati waterfront and a crowd of Cincinnatians cheering on the Bengals in their 2022 run to the Super Bowl behind quarterback Joe Burrow. Finally, we jump to Pete Rose, comparing the city’s love for Burrow to their love for him. Rose professes his affection for the Bengals … and then admits that he bet on their opponent, the Los Angeles Rams.
The essence: From the first episode, we come face to face with Rose, who is actively involved and gives lengthy interviews about his life. Among them are interviews with several prominent figures in the world of sport: sportscasters such as Al Michaels and Lesley Visser, former teammates such as Tommy Helms and others. They are there to tell Rose’s story, but also to examine why he did what he did and to try to say whether he really regrets it.
What shows will it remind you of? There is no shortage of complicated sports figures who have received the documentary treatment. McEnroe Showtime profiled the volatile tennis player; Netflix UNTOLD: Johnny Football allowed us to see the meteoric rise and rapid fall of Johnny Manziel. Still, there is no one with a mix of success and misfortune like Pete Rose.
Our opinion: I want to make two things clear from the start: I am not a fan of Pete Rose, and I am inherently skeptical of sports documentaries that put their protagonists front and center.
The first point stems from Rose’s history: Despite credible allegations that he had bet on baseball while he was a player and manager, Rose spent decades playing the victim, steadfastly denying any wrongdoing and pushing to be reinstated in the game and inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. At the same time, he did little to dispel the idea that he was associated with sports gambling; the only time I saw Rose in person, he was asking for autographs inside a Las Vegas casino. The second point stems from my experience: I’ve watched a lot of sports documentaries, and the ones that are made with the cooperation of the protagonists often earn that cooperation by doing their bidding, working to burnish or rehabilitate their image.
With that in mind, a documentary about Pete Rose featuring Pete Rose is something I’m concerned about. HBO/Max, in my experience, generally does a pretty good job with its sports documentaries (better than many other streaming channels), but I don’t have much interest in seeing any kind of Rose apologia.
Thankfully, Charlie Hustle and the case of Pete Rose The team walks a careful tightrope. It’s willing to let Rose tell his own version of the story (and it’s a revealing version, one that shows admirable drive and deliberate indifference), but it doesn’t allow that version to be the whole story. Many of Rose’s on-camera statements are met with immediate response, either direct or implied — for example, Rose’s insistence that his famous collision with Cleveland catcher Ray Fosse at the 1970 All-Star Game was justified and had no impact on Fosse’s career (as others are quick to point out, it was an exhibition game, and Fosse suffered lingering physical impacts for the rest of his career).
One notable omission, among the many voices from Rose’s career that appear in the documentary, is that of fellow Reds star Johnny Bench, who we are informed via an on-screen title card declined to participate. Bench has been a vocal opponent of Rose’s reinstatement for years, pointing out that Rose knowingly broke the rules, and we see him say so in an archival clip. Rose dismisses this as jealousy, bitterly claiming that Bench resented his own popularity among Reds fans. Again, it’s telling: Even as he pretends to be turning the page, finally admitting that he did, in fact, bet on baseball, Rose is driven by the conflicts of his past.
“I think Pete really believed he hadn’t done anything wrong for a long, long time,” veteran sportscaster Al Michaels speculates. “And then it all just went downhill … over the years. He was in denial. I don’t know if he’s completely back to reality … obviously Pete has his own story to tell. But I would listen carefully; sometimes you have to listen between the lines. Is it the whole truth and nothing but the truth, God help him? I don’t know. Maybe in his mind he thinks it is.”
Sex and skin: None.
Parting shot: The story revolves around his career highs and leads to the defining moment: his ban from playing baseball for his involvement in gambling. Although Rose has already admitted to betting on baseball, he dodges the issue, denies it, and is defiant: “To this day, I don’t think they had evidence that would have held up in court about me betting on baseball. I didn’t keep any records.” (We are quickly shown that investigators had betting slips with his fingerprints on them.) “What do you want, do you want to cut my balls off? That’s enough. All I did was bet on baseball. I didn’t rob banks, I didn’t go around getting girls pregnant… to be honest with you, I guess I’m telling you the truth when I tell you the only bad quality I had was that I bet on baseball.”
Sleeping Star: There are plenty of voices beyond Rose’s, and plenty of ones you’d want to hear in a story about Pete Rose. Perhaps the most welcome presence in the first episode is legendary Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman, who quickly sums up the insular, provincial nature of Cincinnati (something I can attest to, having spent six years living there as an outsider).
Pilot’s most typical phrase: “I cover the Cincinnati Reds,” notes writer C. Trent Rosecrans, reflecting on Rose’s enduring popularity in Cincinnati. “I go all over the country covering the Reds… I have a theory that at every Cincinnati Reds game – spring training, exhibition, regular season, from Seattle to Miami, there’s always one person wearing a No. 14 Reds jersey. We look at ourselves as kind of underdogs… it gets overlooked, you know, we’re not Chicago. Pete is the kind of guy who doesn’t have the greatest talent in the world, but he has the greatest will. That’s the Great American Story, that’s what we all want, that’s what we want to believe in ourselves. In some ways – good and bad – Pete Rose is the embodiment of this city.”
Our calling: STREAM IT. Pete Rose is a complicated figure, perhaps as complicated as any in baseball history. Whether you love him or hate him, Charlie Hustle and the case of Pete Rose It will keep you interested; the whole story is there and you can choose your side.
Scott Hines, editor of the much-loved Action Cookbook Newsletter,is an architect, blogger, and Internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.
