Peter Edward Rose Sr. commonly known as Pete Rose was a professional baseball player and manager. Growing up, his parents encouraged him to participate in sports. He played baseball and football throughout high school. In the spring of 1960, he played for the Dayton Amateur League. If it wasn’t for his uncle, Buddy Bloebaum, this would’ve been the highlight of his career. You see his uncle was the scout for the Cincinnati Reds and he had urged the Reds to give Pete a chance and they did.
His first year with the Reds was in 1963. During a spring training game against the New York Yankees, Whitney Ford gave Pete the nickname Charlie Hustle, after he sprinted to the first base after drawing a walk. However, if you watch the Ken Burns documentary called ‘Baseball’, one of their teammates Mickey Mantle claimed that Whitney had given Rose the nickname after he, while playing left field, made an effort to climb the fence to try to catch a Mantle home run that was about a hundred feet above his head. He also won the National League Rookie of the Year Award.
After the end of that season, he enlisted in the United States Army Reserves. He was assigned to Fort Knox for 6 months of active duty and, for the following six years, he was a part of the 478th Engineering Battalion USAR unit at Fort Thomas Kentucky. Part of what he did in Fort Thomas was he served as one of the company cooks. This meant he had to come in early for one weekend per month for meetings and he could leave early so he could participate in Red’s home games. There were even two other members of the Reds in his unit.
In 1968, he had started this season in a 22-game hitting streak however, he missed 3 weeks with a broken thumb. He then had a 19-game hitting streak later on in the season. In 1970, he was involved in one of the most infamous plays in All-Star game history. Pete was part of the National League and they were against the American League. During this All-Star Game during the bottom of the 12th, a ball was relayed to one of the American League catchers, Ray Fosse, in time to tag Pete out however, Pete went barreling towards him making him drop the ball and score the winning run. Both Pete and Ray ended up with injuries. Ray ended up suffering from a fractured and separated shoulder and Pete missed three games because of a bruised knee.