If you’re wondering why I chose to write about Pete Rose of all people there are a couple of factors. First is the pleasant surprise that my home town team is hosting this year’s all start game next month in the new Busch Stadium. And it occurs to the purist in me to give Charlie Hustle his credit where it is due as a player since I saw him play in person a few times (in Bush Memorial Stadium) and on T.V. regularly. He was a master of the game.

However it is evident from hearing non baseball fans comment ignorantly over the years about his playing skills (you know, the people who say “he wasn’t that good anyway”) that some history needs to be recounted about one of Ohio’s finest. No matter whether you thought he gambled or not Pete could ball with anybody on the diamond. The actual facts are that no other player in Major League Baseball history has been an All-Star at five - count ‘em - five different positions. And you say dude wasn’t that good? Pullease!

And who else could routinely make that head first slide into a base, fully lateral like Superman, without jamming fingers and dislocating shoulders in a pitiful heap?

That was the best part of the old “This Week In Baseball” closing credits back in the day, seeing Pete fully extended hitting the dirt palms first. When I was playing I slid like Pete and I can’t think of many others in little league or high school who tried it. Didn’t seem like a big deal at all to me and it was easy to do. And I looked way more cool than anybody else kicking up a cloud of dust, if I do say so myself.

Pete was also a hero to those of us who couldn’t out-athlete the rest of the guys. I wasn’t the fastest, tallest or most muscular in anything. But I could outlast - outhustle - most so yeah, Charlie Hustle was my guy.

Now he may never make it to the Hall of Fame and he may not deserve to be inducted but at least let’s leave the man’s baseball talents out of the discussion because those cannot be contested. There is no Big-Red-Machine era in Cincinnatti without him, and no Phillies first World Series championship without him. Reds and Philly Fanatics have to show him the love for the championships he helped bring their cities. Yes, the media must do its job and deny him Coopers Town if they decide that Pete hasn’t done sufficient public relations penance but you can’t knock the fact that he is one of the greatest of all time to lace on cleats.