Kelly Kurposka's Reviews > Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball

This book is incredibly well researched. Reading through the notes and bibliography at the end really put into perspective how much time and work went into this book.

The details into spring training, regular season, all star, and postseason games are so vivid, I can picture each pitch and play as they happened.

And since I never do this, I’m going to be nit-picky about the very small misses in this book:

- The term walk-off is used by the author to describe some games in the 1970s where the home team won in the final inning. The term walk-off was not coined until 1988 and I think this would have been a good opportunity to call these “game-winning hits” and explain how we now call these “walk-offs.”

- There was a lot of name-dropping in this book, and for good reason. So many people interacted with Pete Rose and it was interesting to read about the baseball personalities who know and how they crossed paths. But there were random times when a name wasn’t dropped that I thought, why not say the name of the person? For example, Johnny Bench’s wedding that “featured nine hundred guests, including the mayor and the quarterback of the Cincinnati Bengals.” Add those names in!

- And when Pete had a relationship with a girl who he allegedly thought was sixteen (apparently ok in the eyes of the law, but gross, he was 33), she alleges she was actually younger than 16 when they had sex… the author refers to her at different times as a “young woman,” a “teenager,” and a “woman.” I’m ok with saying she’s a teenager, but she was not a woman, call her what she is, a girl.

“It was almost as if he were standing in quicksand that night at Riverfront Stadium—only he was unaware of the world beyond him. Pete didn’t know it, but he was sinking.”

“Thirty-nine times that year, Pete advanced to third base with fewer than two outs in an inning and didn’t score—a statistic that didn’t make any sense to anyone.”

“Tommy said he wanted a bookie who could take bets ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 per game, and Ron informed Tommy that he was good with that kind of action. He’d put no limit on Tommy’s wagers, because Ron knew the money was really coming from Pete Rose, and he figured a man like Pete would always be able to pay his debts.”