When the news hit yesterday that Baseball’s Hit King had passed away at the age of 83, reactions were predictably mixed. On one hand, Pete Rose’s on-the-field play and stat line scream Hall of Fame. Meanwhile, his off-the-field exploits (and not just the gambling!) plant him squarely in the Hall of Shame.
“Why not both!” is the cry of many fans, but at least under Baseball’s current leadership that does not appear likely. Personally, I am waiting on a clever developer to come out with an app where I can wear VR goggles to the Hall of Fame plaque gallery and “replace” the inductees I care little for with Dick Allen, Dale Murphy, Steve Garvey, Dave Parker, and other favorites.
Regardless of your feelings (or mine) about whether Pete belongs in the Hall, I do think there’s at least one thing all baseball fans can agree on: he had a lot of different hairdos on his baseball cards. Here are the ones that stand out most.
THE EARLY YEARS
Charlie Hustle’s earliest baseball cards are all of the “cap on” variety, meaning collectors of the 1960s had no idea what the young brash Rose was sporting between the ears. After all, young white males of the era had as many as three hairdos from which to choose! Were one to place a bet randomly, the probability of success would be 0.333, coincidentally Pete’s batting average from 1968-70.
Fortunately for us, no guesswork is needed, thanks to the 2010 Panini Century set.
Though no year is identified with the photo, Pete is quite young, perhaps even still in high school. He appears to be sporting the classic buzz, a no-nonsense and low maintenance look that reflected his blue collar upbringing.
At least one advantage of the “do” was that no real changes were needed when Pete entered the Army Reserves in November of 1963, as documented by the 1985 Topps Renata Galasso Pete Rose collection.
Still, as All-Star appearances piled up, Pete needed something more appropriate to his elevated place in the game. Rather than go “pretty boy,” which most definitely was not his personality, he landed on the flat top as his hairstyle of choice.
THE TURBULENT 70s
There are elements of Pete’s persona that would have made him the ideal counter-counterculture candidate for keeping his buzz or flat top well into the seventies. Instead, Pete more or less went with the flow. An early harbinger of things to come was the addition of sideburns.
Of course by 1973, his MVP season, the hair had pretty much caught up with the sideburns in terms of length. Though a radical departure from the previous decade, the cut was still neat enough that you could make out Pete’s ears.
By the middle of the decade, his ears were on the way out. Here is Rose, for example, in the 1976 Kroger Cincinnati Reds set. Notice only the smallest sliver of ear lobe is now present.
The offseason, however, was another matter entirely. Sure, Pete would walk through hell in a gasoline suit to play baseball, but that doesn’t mean he wanted to look like hell. When a more sophisticated (or even cult leader) look was called for, Pete wasn’t afraid to trade away some length on top for a little goatee action.
THE “ME” DECADE
By the 1980s most ballplayers had either ditched the long hair and sideburns of the seventies or were coming out of the bullpen. Not so for the man chasing Cobb. If anything, he was only “letting it grow” even more.
As shown on Pete’s 1980 Topps Superstar Photo, Pete’s glorious mane began the decade approaching shoulder length, and was now so long that it completely enveloped not only his ears but his sideburns too.
A haircut, obviously, was one way to bring back the burns, but it was not the only way. Why not just grow out the lamb chops even longer!
Now the shaggy look is fine and dandy if all you’re pursuing is the ghost of Ty Cobb but not if you’re gunning for that Reds manager job. Marge certainly isn’t asking you to go Mike Brady, but can we at least move on from the disco era?
Not a problem, Boss! Here’s the new Pete, offering something of a compromise. The burns are gone, but he can still hit the party scene and not look like a total square. “Just don’t make me part it,” was his only real demand before taking the job as skipper.
Following a second place finish in the division though, who was Pete to make demands? “A part?! Okay, fine, as long as I can keep it long.”
Regardless, with the 1986 campaign off to a dismal start and picture day all but a fading afterthought in the rear view mirror of Pete’s Porsche 930 Slantnose, he decided he was all outta f*cks to give.
A couple of novelty cards from later in the year place Rose’s look somewhere between Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk.
In retrospect, we should have known right then and there that something was wrong. And yet we did nothing. Hindsight is 20/20.
REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
Following his exile from the game he ate, drank, and slept, Rose found his present nearly unbearable. As a result, his post-banishment hairstyles were very much “rooted” in a return to the past. For example, here is Rose in 1991 playing Ty Cobb in the “Babe Ruth” movie.
“C’mon,” you argue. “The hair’s only short because he’s playing a guy from a hundred years ago!” Perhaps, but Pete nonetheless chose to bare his ears for the last 30+ years of his life. “I’m finally listening,” the cut might have signaled to Baseball. Or maybe it was just too freaking hot in Vegas to rock it any other way.
However complicated Pete’s legacy is, I feel fortunate as a baseball fan that I was there for at least a decent chunk of his career. From my earliest days as a collector, it was always a “hit” to pull the card of this sure fire Hall of Famer from a pack, and his pursuit of Cobb was a lesson in the cumulative impact of small things often.
There are lessons in his downfall as well, but the biggest ones are the ones most of us opt to overlook or dismiss: “That could never happen to me,” or “I’d never be that stupid.”
I’m sure Pete thought that too, but then there he went, bats in hand, to the barber by the waterfall, and under the shade of the willows, in a moment of vainglory, commanded his stylist to give him the Bruce Jenner!