Word: game
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When the dust settles on the deal struck between baseball and Pete Rose, it will still be nearly impossible to explain his banishment to the kids who love the game. Rose's bargain was the work of lawyers; its contorted logic was utterly devoid of the simplicity and finality that make the game so refreshing. It was a fine-print compromise that at once allowed Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti to announce that Rose was banned from baseball for life for betting on his own team -- and Rose, an hour later in Cincinnati...
...competitor stubborn enough to play long beyond his prime -- and until he could break Ty Cobb's batting record -- a rookie who ran to first base when he was given a walk, a bruiser who plowed so hard into an opposing catcher during an All-Star game that he separated the man's shoulder, Rose was too vain and too arrogant to beg for mercy from a former Ivy League classics scholar like Giamatti...
Revelations that Rose would gamble on any game, in any sport, at any time -- and seven volumes of evidence, including a stack of betting slips in his handwriting -- did not seem to shame him. Little ever has. Not a 1979 paternity suit that he did not contest, the messy unraveling of his marriage in 1978 (which did not interfere with his 44-game hitting streak), or striking an umpire in the chest, for which he received a 30-day suspension in 1988. Criticism in the press about the friends in thick gold chains and diamond pinky rings who placed wagers...
...mess. He said he had never looked forward to a birthday as much as his new daughter's first (Aug. 22, 1990), since it would signal his first opportunity to apply for reinstatement to baseball, thus sadly and inadvertently revealing her place in his life relative to the game...
...fading type in the record books. America may celebrate winning, but what really fascinates the country is a fall from greatness. Bill Buckner's fielding career is overshadowed by the memory of an easily hit ball rolling inexplicably, eternally through his legs in the tenth inning of the sixth game of the 1986 World Series. Rose in his 24 seasons set records for hits (4,256), games played (3,562) and 200-plus-hit seasons (10). He was the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1973, the World Series MVP in 1975. He won the National League batting title...