PETE ROSE : Has Baseball’s No. 1 Hitter Taken His Last Swings?

TAMPA, Fla. — Pete Rose walked toward the playing fields at the Cincinnati Reds’ training facility carrying his bat and glove.

He wore a batting glove on each hand. It was almost as if nothing had changed in his 25 major league springs, except that for the next three hours he would do nothing more with the bat and glove than carry them, symbolic links to what he once was or still hopes to be.

“A guy asked me the other day if I’m the only manager in baseball to carry a bat and glove around,” Rose said. “I don’t know. I do know that I’m the only manager who can use them.”

But will he? Will he only manage the Reds this year or will he ultimately return to the active roster to extend his records for hits and games and at-bats, not to mention all those other illustrious categories that he leads?

Will he ever again be seen in that familiar batting crouch or did that Aug. 17 strikeout as a pinch-hitter against Goose Gossage represent his final cuts?

Soon to be 46, Rose himself isn’t sure.

“It’s kind of like I’m on the disabled list without being disabled,” he said.

What he is not on is the 40-man roster. He was removed from it in November so that the Reds would have one more spot for a young player whom they did not want to expose to the minor league draft.

Rose was aware that by taking his name off the 40-man roster he would not be eligible to play before May 15.

Maybe if he had hit more than his career low of .219 last year, collecting 52 hits in 237 at-bats, he would have resisted.

Maybe if he weren’t so high on the Reds’ young talent and didn’t have the team’s best interest in mind, he would have fought the idea.

“The idea was to protect as many of our young players as we could,” General Manager Bill Bergesch said. “Pete understood the problem and came off quite willingly.

“He had seen most of our young players in spring training or the instructional league. He looked at the names on the board and said, ‘Take me off.’

“From this point on, it’s up to him. He’s the manager. He makes out the lineup card. If he wants to activate himself, he can do it.”

Again the question: Will he?

“I still like to practice,” he said. “I still love to play. But I hope I don’t have to because that means we would have the right 24 players getting the job done.

“I mean, it’s very simple. The only reason for me to play again is if a guy is not doing a job or if an injury puts someone on the disabled list.

“If neither of those things happen, and I hope they don’t, then I can always activate myself in September, when a club can carry as many players as it wants.

“One way or the other, I’m not worried about it. I can’t sit here and worry about something that can’t happen until May 15 and may not happen until June 1 or July 15 or Sept. 1--that is, if it happens at all.

“I’ve got other things on my mind and a lot of ways to stay busy. What people don’t understand is that if this team doesn’t play well, I’m the one with the best chance of losing his job. Dave Parker won’t lose his job. Buddy Bell won’t lose his job. Pete Rose will lose his job. That’s why I’ve got to keep the best 24 players on the roster and why I’ll never take the spot of somebody who can do the job.

“Of course, just because there might be a kid who can do a better overall job than I can do right now doesn’t mean that when we get to May or June we won’t be looking for someone to come off the bench and pinch hit. Not many guys can do that better than I can.”

Of course. And if the Reds seemed headed for a division title, he will probably want to be on the roster before Sept. 1 to be eligible for the playoffs. “I don’t think anybody can argue with my playoff record,” he said.

Make no mistake, Rose still has his pride, if not his spot on the roster.

“If my last at-bat turns out to be the strikeout against Gossage I can always say, ‘Well, he was a pretty good pitcher,’ ” Rose said.

“What I’m saying is that if May and June and this whole year slips by (without his playing), I don’t think I have anything to be ashamed of. I won’t get any more or less Hall of Fame votes. In fact, if I don’t go to bat this year, I’ll get there one year sooner.”

Rose sat in his clubhouse office, scanning a magazine previewing the 1987 season.

An analysis of the National League’s Western Division race picked the Reds fourth. Rose shook his head and spat out the word fourth, refusing to believe what he was reading.

“Anyone who picks us for fourth just doesn’t know what they’re talking about,” he said.

“I mean, I’m not going to sit here and tell you we’re going to win, but I am going to tell you that there aren’t three teams better than us, and the proof of that is that only one team beat us each of the last two years--the Dodgers in ’85 and Houston last year.

“I realize that this is the time of year when every manager in baseball is confident, but only a certain number of them are justified.

“Based on our talent and how we played last year, I don’t think I’m off base saying we’re going to be very competitive.”

A three-run single by player-manager Rose off the New York Mets’ Dwight Gooden on Mother’s Day of last year gave the Reds a 3-2 victory and seemed to lift them out of the doldrums of a 6-19 start in which they had lost 11 straight games at home.

The Reds went 80-57 after that. In either league, only the Mets, at 88-49, and the Astros, at 81-56, had better records. Houston won in the West, finishing 10 games ahead of the Reds, who were already nine behind when they rallied to beat Gooden.

Now 176-148 for his two full years as manager, Rose said he remains mystified by last year’s start except that he was carrying five rookies, who may have needed that time to adjust, and that six regulars--all except Dave Parker and Bo Diaz--were not hitting their weight.

“None of them are fat either,” Rose said.

“It was also a case where we didn’t really play that badly but kept running into the hottest teams in the league--the Mets when they were hot, the Astros when they were hot, the Expos when they were hot.

“We never saw the Cubs or Cardinals when they were struggling early in the year.”

Rose said he was proud of how his team hung in and came back. He said that the young players should prosper from the experience and that he seems to have the right blend of veterans and younger players.

“A year ago we were talking about potential,” he said. “Now we’ve seen it demonstrated. I’m sure there are other teams with good young players, but none with the abundance of this team.

“Us and the Angels. That’s what I’m told. I know I have it. I don’t know about Gene Autry.”

Rose has it at shortstop, where he will choose between 22-year-old Barry Larkin, who hit .283 in 41 games with the Reds after hitting .329 at Denver, and 20-year-old Kurt Stillwell of Thousand Oaks, who hit only .229 as a rookie but .303 in his final 89 at-bats.

He has it in left field, where he will choose between 23-year-old Kal Daniels, who hit .371 at Denver and .320 in 74 games with the Reds, and 25-year-old Tracy Jones of Hawthorne, who hit .349 as a rookie, though restricted to 46 games because of injuries.

He has it in the bullpen, where 26-year-old Rob Murphy arrived from Denver to go 6-0 with an 0.72 ERA over the second half, complementing 24-year-old Ron Robinson, who was 10-3 with 14 saves, and 26-year-old John Franco, who had 29 saves.

He also has it in center field, where 24-year-old Eric Davis of Los Angeles had 23 homers, 60 runs batted in, 63 stolen bases and a .297 average over the last 93 games.

Rose believes that Davis will be baseball’s next superstar.

“I told him in front of the team that he can be as good as he wants to be, that he can make as much money as he wants to make,” Rose said. “The ball is in his court.

“I was a kid sitting in the stands at Crosley Field when guys like (Hank) Aaron and (Willie) Mays and (Roberto) Clemente broke in. I wasn’t analyzing talent then, but I can’t imagine anyone with more talent than Davis at this stage of his career.

“He’s the only guy in the league who can legitimately hit fourth and steal 100 bases.”

The Reds’ key questions concern the depth of the starting pitching and the bullpen’s ability to survive if the starters again complete only 14 games. Tom Browning, Bill Gullickson and Ted Power, who left the bullpen and went 6-1 in 10 late-season starts, form the starting nucleus.

The hope is that Mario Soto, 5-10 last season and now 30, can return from arthroscopic surgery on his shoulder.

“I like what I see,” Rose said of Soto. “I like his attitude. I like the progress he’s been making.”

Rose thinks he has options. He mentions rookies Pat Pacillo, 23, and Norm Charlton, 24, who were a respectable 11-6 and 10-6 in the minors last year. And he said that Robinson could be brought out of the bullpen in a bid to duplicate Power’s starting success, which would then force the Reds to trade for a reliever.

“The Dodgers still have the best rotation in the division,” Rose said. “But they don’t have our bullpen. We also saw what happened when they don’t have (Pedro) Guerrero.

“It’s like my club trying to contend without Dave Parker. I don’t believe any team should rely on one player, but most teams have one player they can ill afford to lose for a long period.

“Parker and Guerrero are the kind of guys who give you stability and consistency.”

Then is Houston the team to beat?

“Houston has earned the respect of being considered the top team because of what it did last year,” Rose said. “But when was the last time a team repeated?

“The Astros would have to be better than I think they are to repeat.”

The manager of the Reds moved from diamond to diamond at his training base, watching the various preparations.

The ritual has changed for Charlie Hustle, but the managerial role has eased Rose’s transition to part-time player and eventual retirement.

“I don’t know any more about baseball than I did when I first started managing in ‘85,” Rose said. “But I think I’m a better manager because I know my personnel better, and that’s all managing is, knowing people and recognizing what they can do in certain situations.

“I get a kick out of seeing the kids develop and a veteran like Buddy Bell come back the way he did last year when people said he was through. The hardest thing is cutting a player and I’m going to have to do that more than 20 times this spring.”

Of his requirements, Rose said he asks only that the players be on time, give 100% and have fun, which comes only through winning.

“It’s my responsibility to build confidence,” Rose said. “If I don’t have confidence in them, they won’t have confidence in themselves.

“I haven’t changed at all, but I’d be stupid and naive to think that every one of my players could do what I did. I do expect them to approach it like I did.

“I mean, I don’t expect them to slide head first into third base, but I do expect them to slide when they have to.

“I’d like them all to be able to experience everything I did in 24 years, to have the fun that I’ve had.”

The fire still burns, but is directed toward others. Rose has taken batting practice only once in two weeks. He stayed in shape and maintained his eye by playing tennis four times a week during the winter.

“Baseball for me is timing and momentum,” he said. “It does me no good to take two days of batting practice and then miss three. I never pick up the pace until late in the spring. I’ll start this year after we’ve cut the squad down some.”

Rose was picking up the pace last spring when he experienced a hernia. He then caught the flu and opened the season on the disabled list for the first time in his career.

“It was tough mentally not to be able to play with the team getting off so badly,” Rose said. “I didn’t have a lot of spring training and never felt I really got going last year.”

He was probably going as strong as he did all year when he stopped playing for the final six weeks. The reason is something of a mystery. There has been speculation that management pressured him to quit playing.

Rose said only that with the team playing well and Tony Perez, his first-base platoon partner, hitting well and headed for a spot on Rose’s 1987 coaching staff, he wanted Perez to remain in the lineup. In addition, Rose said, he wanted Nick Esasky, his likely first baseman this year, to get some playing time there.

Now?

Rose said it would be premature to announce his retirement or speculate on his eventual role this season. He said it is likely that this will be the last year he even thinks about playing unless he were to have a streak comparable to 1984, when he rejoined the Reds and hit .365 for seven weeks.

“If I were to have a streak like that this year, I wouldn’t be fair to myself not to play next year,” he said. “But if I don’t have a streak like that, I don’t foresee myself playing for 10 or 12 at-bats next year because of my salary structure. I drop about $200,000 if I don’t play. But if I do play, even for one at-bat, I get the money, and that would create too big an argument.”

Either way, Rose said, he’s not looking for the hype of a final National League tour as a player, that fans everywhere have already been too good to him, that he doesn’t need any more “days.”

So what will he take the greatest pride in if his numbers remain what they are now, if he doesn’t bat in 1987? Rose reflected briefly and said:

“The most important probably is that I’ve played in more winning games than anyone else. Some people today don’t put that much emphasis on winning (compared to an economic emphasis).

“Then there are a lot of other things that come to mind. Consistency. Durability. The fact that I never rested against good pitchers. I mean, all I ever tried to do is hit the baseball, catch the baseball, score runs and win games.

“People say I didn’t hit home runs, but get out the record book and look at the total base list. No, don’t bother. I’ll tell you.

“There are five guys ahead of me. One is Hank Aaron. One is Stan Musial. One is Willie Mays. One is Ty Cobb. One is Babe Ruth.

“That’s not a bad quintet, and I’m closing in on Babe.”

The singles hitter is only 41 total bases behind the legendary home run hitter. Will Rose get closer? We’ll see.