Word: cincinnatis
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...player had less enthusiasm for striking, but to the discomfort of his employer, Rose supported the union: "I needed the Players' Association's permission to take a cut over the maximum 20% to return to Cincinnati." This shift dropped him from a high of nearly $2 million to below $500,000. He smiles. "Where would I be without the Players' Association?" Had the owners elected to bluff through a struck season with minor leaguers, he was agreeable to managing the Reds. But Rose, the player, would have been on strike. "I wasn't going to get the hit that...
Meanwhile, Cincinnati's attendance had crash-dived from 2.6 million at the 1976 crest of the Red Machine to 1.2 million in 1983. For his turnstile appeal, certainly not his .259 batting average, Rose was called home last August. He singled and doubled in his first game, slid himself into a perfect mudball, and hit .365 the rest of the year. He could take his time with Cobb after that, and he has. Platooning at first base with another reclaimed icon, Tony Perez, 43, Rose sees to the right-handed pitchers. Though a switch hitter, he bats predominantly left-handed...
Rose's earliest playmate in suburban Cincinnati, Eddie Brinkman, "the Babe Ruth of our high school," made it to the major leagues for 15 distinguished seasons and retired ten years ago. "At seven and eight Pete was really a little guy," recalls Brinkman, now a White Sox coach. "I'd pitch and he'd catch, and when the hitter swung and missed, Pete would stick the ball up in their face and say, 'Hey, batter, batter, batter.' " Pete was a banker's son, though his father was more famous for playing halfback with the semipro Cincinnati Bengals...
...Friend. "My first time up, Francis walked me on four pitches. What he didn't realize was I couldn't have swung at any of them." It was the first of 1,506 walks. "Frank Robinson followed with a homer--on the second pitch. Since Cincinnati used to open before anyone else, I scored the first run of the year." It was the first of 2,129 runs. Off Friend three games later, he collected his maiden hit, a triple, the first of 1,028 extra-base hits...
...close of Rose's sophomore season, Cincinnati lost the pennant on the last day, but a more profound loss changed him. "We saw Hutch go from 220 lbs. to 140 lbs. with cancer that year and never once complain. Tough. Really tough. Great. He was a man. It was like a skeleton walking into the clubhouse to conduct a meeting, but that skeleton was in charge. It did something to me, lifted my intensity a level, made me approach long-term goals like they were short-term goals. That winter I was playing for Reggie Otero, Hutch's third-base...