I was sort of hoping to find a photo of Pete Rose and Dikembe Motumbo together, but it seemed very unlikely, as they starred in different sports, in different eras, but mainly because you could say they ran in very different crowds. And I thought a contrast between the two of them physically would make for a nice image of how much different they were in almost every way. The fact that the two men died on the same day provides an interesting opportunity to focus on that contrast.
Of course we can never really know people like we think they know them. But you can draw a lot of conclusions about how people are by the way they behave when they know they’re being watched, and I just happened to watch the documentary about Pete Rose a few weeks ago. Rose was of course the eventual all-time leader in two categories in Major League Baseball. He played in the most games and got the most hits of anyone who ever played the game. Which was a testament to one of the things we know most about Pete Rose. He loved baseball. And he always gave it all he had.
His nickname was Charlie Hustle, and it was given to him by Mickey Mantle, who was watching him play in a spring training game when Rose was a rookie. One of Rose’s trademark moves was to race down to first base on a walk, and when Mantle and his buddy Whitey Ford watched this young rookie do that, Mantle said “Hey, check out ol’ Charlie Hustle there.” He didn’t mean it as a compliment. But it came to personify Rose’s playing style. An early scouting report said that Rose “Can’t hit, can’t throw, can’t field, and can’t run. But he can hustle.”
Rose arguably made the most of his limited talents more than any player in the game, leading the league in batting several times, earning several gold gloves, and maybe most impressively, being named to the All Star team at five different positions.
But we all know the story of what happened after his career, although it actually started while he was still playing. When Rose was in his last year, serving as the last player/manager in baseball, reports surfaced that he was betting on the game. And not just the game, but on his own team. Rose was suspended for life from baseball by then commissioner Bart Giamatti (Paul’s father, by the way), so for the rest of his life, he was not permitted to take part in any official activity sponsored by Major League Baseball, and of course it has so far kept him out of the Hall of Fame, a fact that Rose fought right to the end.
To say that Rose was his worst enemy is an understatement. For twelve years after he was accused of betting, Rose denied it, and kept applying for reinstatement. But it seemed that every time he was able to garner enough sympathy that it looked as if he might get a second chance, he would do something to undermine his chances. He went to jail for tax evasion. He admitted to having a relationship with a girl who was only sixteen at the time, while he was married. He insulted a young woman reporter who asked him a question he didn’t like, then he insulted her again when she came to ask him for an apology.
Rose came from the generation of men who got away with shit, as we see in the documentary when Rose meets up with his old friend Marty Brenneman, who did the play-by-play for Rose’s team, the Cincinnati Reds. Marty approaches Rose at one of the thousands of events he did signing autographs to make some money, and Rose turns to Marty’s wife and says “You still got them big hooters.” Mr. and Mrs. Brenneman laugh, because it’s the kind of joke guys like Pete Rose got away with sixty years ago. It’s just Pete being Pete, right? Except that this is exactly why Pete Rose never got that second chance. Because Pete Rose was not a guy who was ever going to consider the possibility that he might be wrong, or that he might need to change.
Throughout this documentary, Rose brags that he still bets on sports. He brushes off questions about his questionable relationships with younger women. Right up to the end, he was Charlie Hustle, only the hustle became his only way of trying to compensate for losing everything that was important to him.
And then we have Dikembe Mutombo, who was an all-star center, first for the Georgetown Hoyas, where he played for legendary coach John Thompson, and then mostly for the Denver Nuggets in the NBA. If there was one thing Rose and Mutombo had in common, it was that they were showmen. But while Rose’s showmanship had the macho bravado of his time, Mutombo was playful about it, wagging a finger at anyone who dribbled down into the paint to try and get a shot off against him. As he rose to his great 7’2” height and swatted these shot attempts away, Mutombo would turn to the shooter and wag his finger, a friendly reminder that they are in his space, his domain. Mutombo was the Defensive Player of the Year four times, and he finished second all time, to Hakeem Olajuwon (although they did not keep this statistic when Wilt Chamberlin was playing or he would surely be the all-time leader).
But it was outside of the lines of the field of play where we most see the contrast between these two men. Mutombo was a native of the Republic of Congo in Africa. Pete Rose signed a contract toward the end of his career that made him the highest paid player in baseball, but for the rest of his life, he showed up at memorabilia events to make money to live on. Meanwhile, Mutombo utilized his earnings to start the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation, whose entire focus was on improving living conditions in his native Congo. He helped start a $29 million hospital in Congo, supported the Special Olympics, and paid for countless other enterprises out of his own pocket, including buying the uniforms for the women’s basketball team from Zaire for the 1996 Olympic Games.
The awards Mutombo was given for his humanitarian work are too numerous to mention. He was, in other words, the polar opposite of Pete Rose. Which makes his death from brain cancer at the way too young age of 58 a tragedy, while Pete Rose’s passing after 85 years of being Pete Rose feels much more like a wasted opportunity to be someone who made a difference in the world.
Sounds as tho Rose had a gambling addiction that made his life Hell at times... Many of us have seen what that can do. RIP Pete Rose and Mr Matumbo.
The contrast between these two is as stark as their personalities. Thank you for giving credit where credit is due.