Had more than 210 hits in season only twice.
Didn’t play fewer than 100 games in a season until 1986, his final season.
Hit under .300 in 9 seasons.
Drew more than 80 walks in 6 seasons, including 1985, at age 44, when he hit 2 homers, and drew 106 walks in 1974, when he hit 3 homers.
Had more than a .400 OBP in 5 seasons.
Led the N.L. in doubles in 5 seasons, including 1974-1976, and 51 doubles in 1978.
His slugging percentage peaked at .512, in 1969.

Played 162 games in a season 6 times, and 163 games in a season twice.
Had more than 700 plate appearances in 15 seasons.
Had 86 hits in 268 playoff at-bats, for a .321 average, hitting .381 in the NLCS.
His career-best 20 steals in 1979 came at age 38; he stole 8 bases in 1985.
Led the N.L. in hits 7 times.
His 1,566 career walks rank 14th all time.
Led the N.L. in singles only three times.

Was in the top 5 in MVP voting in 5 seasons.
Won the 1968 Hutch Award, 1969 Lou Gehrig Memorial Award, and 1976 Roberto Clemente Award.
Leads the majors with 15,890 career plate appearances, ahead of Carl Yastrzemski’s 13,992, and 14,053 at-bats, ahead of Hank Aaron’s 12,364.

After being traded by the Montreal Expos to the Cincinnati Reds for Tom Lawless on August 16, 1984, Rose hit .365 in 26 games, with a .430 OBP. His 147 OPS+ with the Reds was his highest for a team since 1969.
From 1963-1969, he stole 50 bases but was caught stealing 60 times.
In the rest of his career, Rose stole 148 bases and was caught stealing 89 times.
Despite leading the league in 1975 in times on base, with 310, he only tried to steal a base once that year, and was caught.
He led the league in times on base 9 times, including 1973-1976.

A few miles south of Weed, Cal., a battered sign-RISBERG’S-stands out with an arrow pointing down a narrow road to the left. Below the big letters are the words “cocktails-dancing.” . . .

And driving the car, right alongside of you, is the hero of that [1919 World] series, a left-handed pitcher named Dutch Reuther, who toiled for the winning Cincinnati Reds. “It’s the same guy. He was one of the guys that sold it out.”

“At the time, everything seemed all right. But now, looking back, I can see where the fix was on. I can’t forget the way Risberg handled that double-play ball—it was awful.”

“In the first two years of the league, we’d get calls in the office from local people saying, ‘Hey, I’d like to play in the fall league,”‘ said Steve Gilbert, the league’s media-relations director. “They thought it was a semipro league.”

But then the Chicago White Sox placed Jordan in the league, and the national spotlight swung toward Arizona, and the calls from untalented locals trying to join stopped. Jordan finished his season with a .252 average (31 for 123), including 34 strikeouts, but he boosted the league’s ticket sales from last year’s total of 35,568 to more than 100,000.

“He’s been everything for this league,” said Dan O’Brien, the league’s director of baseball operations. “Everything. He’s the linchpin. He’s the primary focus who has really brought identity to the league. “As good as the league is – and it is good – the first two years it was just a rumor in the valley here.”

So far, one in every three players who passes through this league has made the majors for at least a short while. Each major league team must contribute six prospects. The White Sox petitioned the league to see, with Jordan, if they could place seven. “I don’t like to think of any of us as fools,” O’Brien said. “We know what he did for the Southern League. People just lose their minds when they see him.”

“He’s a very nice guy,” says a pitcher named Dan Carlson, a San Francisco Giants prospect. “He’s probably the biggest superstar in the world, compared to anybody, and he’s down to earth. You can talk with him and joke with him.”

Perhaps the most amazing thing so far is this: Despite his struggles, despite nearly 10 months of the daily baseball grind, despite no ticket to the majors in clear reach, Jordan is still at it.

“Right now, mentally, I’ve hit a wall,” Jordan said one night toward the end of the season. “There’s mental fatigue, but not physical. Earlier in my career, I hit a wall until I learned what was asked of me and how to deal with the season. But learning this will help me for next year. It will give me mental stamina for next year.”

And there will be a next year, Jordan vows.

“My offseason is very crucial to me,” he said. “It’s crucial to me more than most. That’s really when I am going to make my gains so that when the season comes around I am better than I was last year.” Which is why he has a stack of videotapes waiting nearby. He has not yet watched tapes of himself batting, but he will do so soon. “That’s the one thing I want to do in the offseason,” he said. “From Day One until now. It’s going to be crucial to me.”

One of the biggest hurdles along Jordan’s base line is driving the ball consistently. He is making more contact than he used to but still isn’t hitting the ball with authority. Jordan cooled off some at the plate because he didn’t see as many fastballs as he did earlier this fall. And therein lies Jordan’s biggest problem: He got fastballs early and was able to adjust and hit them. So pitchers adjusted and fed him more curveballs. Now, Jordan must make another adjustment. And if he does, pitchers will readjust and throw more smoke, and then can Jordan adjust again? The process will repeat itself over and over, and Jordan will not become a serious major league prospect until he can master it.

“He’s improved,” Twins general manager Terry Ryan said. “In the short amount of time I’ve seen him in spring training and in the short amount of time I’ve seen him here, he’s improved his reactions, his first-step quickness, his ability to make decisions on the bases. You can see it. That doesn’t cover the fact that he’s 32. He still needs at-bats to see various types of pitches – split-fingers, left-handed pitchers and what they have to offer, right-handed pitchers and what they do, relievers… he just needs at-bats.”

“I’m still tentative,” Jordan said. “I’m still trying to learn what a major league player is. Little by little, I’m getting better. I have to learn how to hit to the opposite field. I have to work on my fundamentals before I can even think about power. I see the ball well, but I’m still trying to learn how to stay back.”

If Jordan starts next season in Class AAA, as expected, he is close enough for a recall to the majors – particularly when rosters expand next September or, if Chicago either has the division clinched or needs to generate some late-season interest if it doesn’t win the division.

The White Sox still aren’t completely sure what to do with him, but they are amazed that Jordan has stuck with this as long as he has. “First of all, I couldn’t believe he would do it,” General Manager Ron Schueler said. “The impact he had in basketball – I don’t care how good he gets in this, he is not going to be as good as he was in basketball.”

But, according to Jordan, he can find here what he could no longer find in basketball.

“Getting to know the guys, seeing professional players before they are (major league) players,” he said. “There are a lot of great players on this team who are going to be greater players. To relive the stages I had to go through in basketball is very gratifying. That’s part of this whole dream. I’ve been to the top. Now, I want to see what the stages are in getting there.”

The Scottsdale Scorpions season ended on December 1, 1994, when they didn’t make the Fall League playoff. Paul Sullivan of the Chicago Tribune wrote:

“I’ve learned a lot in all areas, but I think more so mentally,” Jordan said this week. “Being mentally strong to deal with disappointments day-in and day-out, and still having the energy to come back the next day and try to start fresh.

“It’s very easy to carry things over from game to game. But if you do, it’s just going to last a little bit longer. Mentally it’s been a real big challenge for me.”

When Jordan was assigned to the Arizona Fall League, White Sox General Manager Ron Schueler said Jordan likely would be promoted to Triple-A Nashville with a decent showing, despite hitting.202 in his debut season at Double-A Birmingham. Midway through his stint as a Scottsdale Scorpion, Jordan’s promotion was all but set, and he was even making a commercial for the Nashville Sounds.

Jordan finished the season hitting.252 with eight runs batted in, no homers and only five extra-base hits in 120 at-bats. He lead the team with 34 strikeouts.

“He’s definitely improving,” said Scottsdale shortstop Craig Wilson, who grew up watching Jordan on TV. “His hitting has come a long way. He’s stinging the ball pretty good and making tremendous strides.”

“He may not make it to the major leagues,” said Terry Francona, Jordan’s manager at Birmingham and Scottsdale. “He knows that. But he’s not going to stop trying.”

Most baseball insiders believe it is no longer a question of whether Jordan will one day play with the White Sox, but whether he will have earned his promotion by merit or because of his celebrity. His bat speed is still suspect, though one scout who asked for anonymity said Jordan has indeed made great progress since Sarasota.

“I thought he didn’t attack the ball last spring,” the scout said. “You have to hit the ball with authority, have that transfer of weight, the quick wrists and arm movement. He was content with making contact back then and he hit a lot of lazy popups and groundouts. But he’s come a long way.

“I think the majority of scouts feel the way I do. He’s gone from zero to where he’s at now. The scouts gained more respect as the year went on and we saw he was really committed to this. The.202 average doesn’t sound good, but a lot of guys in the minors have played all their lives and still hit around.200. It’s just too bad Jordan is almost 32. If only he had more time… “

“Naturally, I’m going to be judged on my stats and I know that,” Jordan said. “Deep down inside I felt I made some progress and I’m very happy with my progress.

“I didn’t come in expecting to hit 15-20 home runs and put up some unbelievable numbers. I just came in to learn as much as I can, take it back with me over the winter, work harder and go into spring training with a little more information.”

The one certainty is that people come out to watch Jordan play. Birmingham drew a club record 467,867 fans this year, and Scottsdale has drawn a Fall League record 36,815 in 22 home games, nearly breaking the Summer league record of 38,568 in 142 games….

One Scorpions game was switched from Tempe to Tucson so that southern Arizonans could get their one and only glimpse of Jordan. His presence helped draw a Fall League record 7,836 fans, and he gave them what they came to see with a run-scoring single in his first at-bat and a pair of stolen bases later on.

“A lot of people will look at it as an opportunity for the league to get more exposure and certainly make some money,” Jordan said. “It’s a business and I realize that. The way I look at it is that I got something from it personally and experience-wise, so both of us should be happy.”

Nashville will be the next recipient of the Jordan gold rush, and team president and General Manager Larry Schmittou is eagerly awaiting his arrival.

“I was a doubting Thomas,” Schmittou said. “He was trying to do something after a 15-year layoff. But I watched him take 200-300 extra swings a day, and take extra balls in the outfield, and I saw a lot of progress when he came into (Nashville) in August. With two strikes, pitchers at least had to pitch to him.”

“I think he can go as far as he wants to,” Wilson said. “If he knows he’ll get a legitimate shot, he’ll stick it out. The most surprising thing to me is that the guy has accomplished everything you could want to accomplish in basketball, and then he comes out here and works his tail off.”

He has lasted longer than many folks expected. How much longer will Jordan stay with baseball?

“I still love the game,” he said. “As long as I continue to get better… I mean, I haven’t really put a time-frame on myself. I don’t have anything else to do. Why not just keep playing?”

The implication of these stories is that Jordan would have kept playing, for Nashville in AAA in 1995, if the strike hadn’t kept going and he hadn’t been asked to become a replacement player that spring. Instead, he went back to the Bulls. But a projection of his baseball career into 1996 would put him on track to get onto the White Sox’s roster, probably as a fourth or even fifth outfielder, not playing very well but not being simply a publicity grab by the Sox. Maybe he would’ve hit.270 or.280 for Nashville in ’95, hitting for just a little power, and drawing a decent number of walks. Getting called up to the Sox late in the ’95 season, then sticking on the roster in ’96.

It would have been a major coup for MLB to have the country’s biggest sports celebrity choose baseball over basketball, playing for the White Sox in a fairly marginal role when he could have been going after more NBA titles with the Bulls. And that’s one more reason why the ’94-’95 strike was such a mess for pro baseball.

Here’s a story from the San Diego Union-Tribune on Jordan’s Arizona Fall League debut on Oct. 6, 1994:

The game, an 8-7 victory over the Tempe Rafters, played a few miles from the scene of the Chicago Bulls’ three-peat in 1993, came one year to the day that Jordan left the NBA for the minor league bus trips.

It was an up-and-down Fall League debut for Jordan. He had an infield hit his first time up — but promptly was picked off. His second time up, with runners on second and third, he popped up. In the fifth inning he committed two errors in left field to help Tempe to four runs. But he followed up with a hard single in the sixth, then a single to drive in the tying and winning runs in the seventh and another single in the ninth (after a brushback). His line: 4-for-5, two RBI, two errors and a baserunning mistake.

The Scorpions uniform added a nice touch of coincidental irony. Jordan was once again dressed in red and black.

“I was taking another step in life, which a lot of people don’t seem to take,” Jordan reflected yesterday before the game. “Possibly being considered not-the-best, I was willing to (risk that). I was committed to that decision. I knew what I wanted to do. I just didn’t know if it would happen.”

It’s happening to the extent that organizers had to set up a makeshift area in a weight room for Jordan to address the media. With no baseball playoffs to cover, more than 70 writers and broadcasters covered the Fall League opener, and a record crowd of 6,116 (tickets: $4 and $3) filled all but one section of Tempe Diablo Stadium.

So this is what baseball has come to, in the year of the strike. Michael Jordan is suddenly the sport’s top attraction. Last year, the league lured fewer than 200 per game to watch baseball’s top prospects. Last Sunday, 800 people showed up to watch Jordan practice at a local high school, and hundreds of students played hooky to witness Scottsdale’s practices during the week. The league’s 2,200-seat season ticket package sold out.

Given his enduring fame, Jordan was asked before the game whether he would consider becoming a replacement player, should the labor strife drag on through the beginning of next major league season.

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “I don’t want to create any kind of controversy between the players and myself.”

“People don’t realize how difficult it is to hit a baseball,” said Birmingham manager Terry Francona, also managing the Scorpions. “I’ve been hitting.202 all my life. He did it after not playing for 15 years, since high school, and that was amazing. But he’s not going for amazing. He’s going for the big leagues.”

Midway through the season, that dream seemed so elusive that, after a game in Memphis, Jordan opened up to Francona. Jordan admitted yesterday that he was thinking about quitting. Francona convinced him to keep the faith.

“He was really struggling,” said Francona. “We talked for a long time. He wasn’t sure he was following the right path. More than anything, though, he was concerned about taking up a spot that somebody else might have deserved.”

Jordan rebounded to finish third on the team with 51 RBI, a noteworthy stat considering his batting average. Also, he tied for fifth in the Southern League with 30 stolen bases. What stoked Jordan was the final month, when he hit.260 and started to hit homers.

He began acquiring the knack of hitting behind the runner, among many of the sport’s subtleties. The batting swing felt “more natural,” he said, and, critically, he learned to handle the day-to-day frustration of swinging and missing. “Athletically and physically, basketball is harder,” said Jordan. “But mentally, this game is a lot harder. You have to deal with disappointment so often.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” he said. “I know I’m probably the last man on this team. That’s the challenge: to keep moving forward. I never thought I was too big to learn.”

Jordan went to Chicago’s Sarasota complex to continue his training in the Florida Instructional League before coming to Arizona last week. Now in its third season, the Fall League attracts top prospects, usually off Class AA and Class AAA rosters. Shortstop Derek Jeter of the Yankees, Baseball America’s ’94 Minor League Player of the Year, is with Chandler. Houston’s Phil Nevin, drafted in the first round out of Cal State Fullerton, is Mesa’s third baseman.

Here are a few final quotes. From Jordan: “Baseball is a passion, not an obsession. I love the game and enjoy playing it. As long as I keep improving and continue to enjoy myself, I’ll keep playing until the White Sox tell me to stop.”

And, from a Chicago Tribune article, one quote from Nashville’s Larry Schmittou: “I’ve never said this before, but I’ll say it now-the guy will make the big leagues. With his body and work habits, he’s at the big-league level now. He’s just still trying to learn the game. I think he’ll make the big leagues, and play as long as he played in the NBA.”

From Frank Thomas: “I’m looking forward to him being a teammate soon. He’s making some serious strides. I’ve seen him a couple times in Arizona so far, and he’s looking good. He’d be another positive person in that puzzle, and we need that kind of leadership.”

Giamatti, a chain smoker who once said that cigarettes were his primary vice and who resisted the efforts of a number of baseball owners who tried to get him to quit smoking, had left New York Friday morning to spend the Labor Day weekend on the popular vacation island.

“I dropped him off at noon on Martha’s Vineyard and he seemed fine,” deputy commissioner Francis T. Vincent Jr., who traveled to New England with Giamatti, said. “This is a tremendous shock. He was a uniquely talented man who had great friends and admirers. It’s a serious loss for the country, the sport and his family.”

President Bush, vacationing in Kennebunkport, Me., said he had been a close friend of Giamatti’s for many years and recently talked with him to express his admiration for the high standards Giamatti brought to the Rose case.

“I just want to pay my respects,” Bush said. “He was a great person. He loved the game of baseball and in a short time made a real contribution to the game, standing for the highest possible ethical standards.”

Giamatti had spent two years as National League president before being elected to a five-year term as commissioner in a unanimous vote of the 26 baseball owners Sept. 8, 1988.

He succeeded Peter V. Ueberroth on April 1 of this year. He is the first commissioner to die in office since Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who died Nov. 25, 1944.

Attorney Robert A. Pitcairn Jr., in a statement issued Friday on Rose’s behalf, said that Rose was “deeply saddened” by the news of Giamatti’s death.

“In spite of their dispute, Pete had great personal respect for the commissioner. He extends his deepest sympathy to Commissioner Giamatti’s family.”

Rose, before agreeing to the terms of his suspension, contended that Giamatti had prejudged his case and sought an injunction that would have prevented the commissioner from ruling on it. The long dispute was believed to have created stress for Giamatti, but he denied that in a recent interview.

“While it’s a serious matter, it doesn’t take up that much of my time,” he said. “Most of my time, 80 to 90% of it, is spent on other things. The way it’s been played (by the media) would make you think that I’ve been sitting here all day worrying about it, but that hasn’t been the case for months.”

Baseball’s rules provide for the Executive Council, made up of the two league presidents and eight club owners, to carry out the commissioner’s duties until a successor is chosen. An owners’ meeting, previously scheduled for Milwaukee Sept. 13-14, will now focus on that objective, a spokesman for the commissioner’s office said.

Among those likely to receive consideration, baseball sources said, are American League president Bobby Brown, National League president Bill White, Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig, New York Mets president Frank Cashen, Oakland Athletics vice president Sandy Alderson and deputy commissioner Vincent, whose position was created in a reorganization of the commissioner’s office by Giamatti and whose presence provides the sport with an executive who is familiar with the workings of the office until the Executive Council makes an interim selection.

Vincent, a longtime friend of Giamatti’s, is an attorney who formerly was chairman and chief executive officer of Columbia Pictures Industries Inc., as well as senior vice president of the Coca-Cola Company and president and chief executive officer of Coca-Cola’s entertainment business section. He served as a liaison to Giamatti on the Rose case and heads the commissioner’s corporate, licensing and broadcasting divisions.

Angelo Bartlett Giamatti was born in Boston on April 4, 1938. His father, Valentine, was a literature professor at Mt. Holyoke College and an avid Red Sox fan, Giamatti recalled in an interview.

“I was probably 7 or 8 years old when my father and uncle took me to my first baseball game,” he said. “I’d been listening on the radio often enough, but going to Fenway Park, I just was astonished at the whole thing.”

The memory and the loyalty stayed with him. He often wore a Red Sox cap and carried a transistor to listen to the team’s games while serving as Yale president. He grew up with the romantic’s view that baseball is best played on grass in the afternoon, but he lacked the talent to play it himself and gravitated to literature like his father.

He received a BA degree in English from Yale in 1960 and a Ph.D. in comparative literature in 1964. He taught Italian and comparative literature at Princeton before returning to Yale in 1966. He became a full professor there at 33 and director of the Division of Humanities at 37.

He was elected president of the university in 1978-the youngest in two centuries-and served for nine years, providing Yale with its first balanced budget in a decade and ultimately healing the wounds of his admittedly hard-line stance in the face of a 1984 strike by clerical and technical workers.

“He gave of himself magnificently as a teacher, scholar and leader,” Benno C. Schmidt Jr., Giamatti’s successor at Yale, said Friday. “This university will be a better place because of his service. He will never be forgotten here.”

Giamatti, throughout his academic career, wrote a number of books, essays and articles on Renaissance literature, but he also wrote about baseball, which attracted the attention of the game’s owners and executives. He became the 12th president of the National League on Dec. 11, 1986, and said:
“Dante would have been delighted.”

He added at the time that “people of letters have always gravitated to sport” and that he had long found baseball to be “the most satisfying and nourishing of games-outside of literature, of course.”

When asked what his colleagues at Yale thought about his decision to become a baseball executive, Giamatti laughed and said: “One group thought it was nifty. The other thought it was the ultimate proof of my essential unsoundness.”

“The prism through which I see things is the prism that understands baseball is an enormously important American institution with long and deep roots whose purpose is to provide pleasure and fun for the American people, and whose integrity and authenticity are essential in order to provide that pleasure,” he said in a recent interview.

“The pace of the game allows for rumination even at the moment instead of just in retrospect,” he added. “And it is a game with a history and mythology so intimately connected to America that in some idealized and mythological sense it is virtually synonymous with America.”

With the owners facing difficult negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement when the 1989 season ends, Giamatti’s style, his grass-roots approach, was seen as a possible healing influence on the labor unrest of the corporate-oriented Ueberroth years. The owners were fined $10.5 million by arbitrator Tom Roberts on Thursday for violating the bargaining agreement by acting in concert to restrict free-agent movement during the winter of 1985-86, one of three collusion grievances filed by the Major League Players Assn. during Ueberroth’s tenure.

“Baseball has been deprived today of the services of its finest commissioner in history,” Ueberroth, vacationing in Paris, said in a statement released through his Newport Beach, Calif., office. “Bart Giamatti encompassed everything that is good and enduring about America’s favorite pastime. For this man of words, courage and deeds . . . no words can express the loss.”

Said New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner: “We’ve lost a true Renaissance man. Any other commissioner will be pale by comparison. He was brilliant. He was compassionate. He cared for the game and cared for its people.”

On the day that he replaced Ueberroth as commissioner, Giamatti said that his lifelong objective had been to become American League president so that he could receive a pass to Fenway Park. Flags at the fabled Boston stadium flew at half-staff after Giamatti’s death.

The next summer, Claire Smith of the S.F. Chronicle wrote:

Pete Rose, baseball’s career hit leader, was sentenced yesterday to five months in a federal correctional institution for filing false income tax returns.

The sentence, handed down by U.S. District Judge Arthur S. Spiegel, also requires Rose to serve three months in a community treatment center or halfway house, pay a $50,000 fine and serve 1,000 hours of community service. It does not permit parole.

“I accept my punishment,” Rose said in a statement released yesterday. “I will serve my sentence, pay my debt to society and get on with my life.”

The 49-year-old Rose, who left an indelible impression on baseball as much for his cocky demeanor as for his long list of records and achievements, including his record 4,256 hits, appeared visibly shaken even before he learned the result of his having pleaded guilty April 20 to two felony tax charges.

Already banned from baseball because of gambling allegations, he listened, his face flushed, as Spiegel explained to the filled courtroom the reasoning behind his decision.

“We must recognize,” the judge said, “that there are two people here: Pete Rose, the living legend, the all-time hit leader and the idol of millions; and Pete Rose, the individual, who appears today convicted of two counts of cheating on his taxes.

“Today, we are not dealing with the legend. History and the tincture of time will decide his place among the all-time greats of baseball. With regard to Pete Rose, the individual, he has broken the law, admitted his guilt, and stands ready to pay the penalty.”

Given an opportunity to speak before pronouncement of the sentence, the former Cincinnati manager, who played for the Reds and the Philadelphia Phillies, expressed shame over his conviction. Flanked by his legal team, he said: “I would like to say that I am very sorry, very shameful to be here today in front of you.”

His voice quavering, he continued: “I think I’m perceived as a very aggressive, arrogant type of individual. But I want people to know that I do have emotion.

“I do have feelings, and I can be hurt like everybody else. And I hope no one has to go through what I went through the last year and a half. I lost my dignity. I lost my self-respect. I lost a lot of dear fans and almost lost some very dear friends.”

Sounding as if he would break down and cry, Rose continued:

“I have to take this opportunity to thank my wife for giving me so much moral support during this ordeal. It had to be very tough on her when your 5-year-old son would come home from school and tell her his daddy is a jailbird.”

Moments later, Spiegel handed down two five-month sentences, one for each count. The sentences are to run concurrently, without possibility of parole.

Spiegel ordered Rose to continue to receive psychiatric help for what Rose has come to describe as a gambling addiction. Rose must continue the therapy until medical officials deem it no longer necessary.

The judge recommended that Rose serve his five-month sentence at the Ashland, Ky., Federal Correctional Institution Camp, a minimum-security facility. Ashland is about 160 miles southeast of Cincinnati, where Rose was born and raised and played the better part of his 24-year major league career.

The judge gave Rose a stay of the sentence so that he could have surgery on a knee he injured when playing ball at his wife’s family reunion in Indiana last weekend. Rose must report to Ashland by midday August 10, unless the court gives permission for further medical leave.

His tax problems began to surface in early 1989 while baseball investigator John Dowd started looking into Rose’s betting habits. A federal grand jury was convened in Cincinnati to see whether Rose reported all his income.

The investigators determined that Rose failed to report earnings of $345,967.60 from card shows, personal appearances and sale of memorabilia from 1984 to 1987.

On April 20, in an arrangement with the government, Rose pleaded guilty to two felony counts of filing false federal tax returns, in 1985 and 1987. Federal prosecutors agreed not to pursue further charges.

As part of the plea agreement, Rose has paid the government $366,042.86 in additional taxes, interest and penalties.

Steroids are an artificial facsimile of the male hormone testosterone. Because they rapidly build protein and therefore muscle, steroids routinely are prescribed for geriatrics and postoperative patients. Their use by healthy athletes, while not illegal if obtained by prescription, is a corruption of the drug in search of muscular power. This use is against the rules of major track and field organizations on grounds the drug is an artificial stimulant (with dangerous side-effects, including cancer) that distorts fair competition.

Yet estimates run to 90 percent when experts consider how many big-time track athletes use steroids. . . .

It is now incumbent on the U.S. Olympic Committee to establish testing procedures year-around and kick out the violators.

The steroid episodes [at the Pan American Games in summer 1983] brought Dr. Robert Kerr, a Los Angeles physician, into public view.

In 18 years, he estimates he has prescribed steroids for 10,000 athletes from baseball, football, basketball and track. He says 1 million athletes use steroids. By prescribing steroids and monitoring the effects, he says, he saves athletes from the dangers of a “dark alley black market” that sells veterinary-medicine steroids and suspect steroids imported from Europe.

“Abuse is rampant,” Kerr said. So he has no qualms about prescribing drugs that violate athletic rules.

“We’re talking about consenting adults here. They know the risks, they know that we don’t know the long-term effects yet. But if we can provide laboratory monitoring, maybe we can prevent any effects . . . The danger in the current controversy is that these athletes will be mentioned with the NFL cocaine-users and be driven further underground.”

Kerr was asked if sports shouldn’t be a contest of athletes, man against man, instead of a man and his druggist against . . .

“This is not fantasyland,” the doctor said. “People shouldn’t smoke, they shouldn’t drink alcohol, they shouldn’t drive over the 55 mile per hour limit. But they will. Athletes will use steroids. The best I can do is provide some safety. To believe anything else is to believe there’ll be no more wars. It’s not real life.”

Al Oerter won four Olympic gold medals throwing the discus from 1956 to ’68. He says he never took a steroid until “experimenting a couple months in my 1976 comeback.” He is convinced steroids do nothing to enhance performance. “It is a placebo effect. It just causes you to retain water and puff up. It is, almost, an excuse that you use to avoid the hard training necessary to build muscle density.”

“Athletes will do it, anyway,” Oerter said, “because the financial reward is worth the supposed short-term risk. They say a gold medal in the 1984 Olympics is worth a minimum of $50,000 and a maximum of $1.5 million.

“. . . Dr. Kerr may believe he is helping people, but he has to ‘fess up to his own contribution to the problems. Those problems are more pervasive than Dr. Kerr indicates.

“I go into gyms and see kids barely past puberty trying to buy steroids from the gym man. I see 14-year-olds all of a sudden puffing up. They’re lifting weights above the ligaments’ and tendons’ capacity. And why? They’ve been taking it all in. They see a football player 6-feet-7 and 314 pounds knocking down 12 people at once. It’s the kid’s fantasy to get to that size and strength, and they know steroids are supposed to be the way.”

was 19 and sleeping in a foxhole near Bastogne, Belgium, when he was awakened by the rumble of German tanks. He was a soldier, but not a fighter. He was a country boy who would write letters to his parents about being scared to death. But there he was, looking up at German soldiers who had climbed out of those tanks and pointed their weapons at his head.

He was captured. He and a buddy huddled together and watched as the rest of their platoon was captured as well. They stared at one another. They stared into their dim futures. They wondered what to do.

Frank Jobe chose flight.

His buddy shoved one of the distracted German soldiers. Jobe saw an opening and dived down a nearby hill. His buddy followed. They rolled to a road, where they spotted an oncoming truck. Without looking closely, they jumped on.

“I didn’t know if it was one of their trucks or our trucks,” Jobe recalled, smiling. “Looking back, I guess I was pretty lucky it was one of our trucks.”

It is no accident that nearly 50 years later, if you’re a pitcher and your livelihood depends on somebody cutting into your shoulder, this is the guy you want holding the scalpel. . . .

He never planned to be part of any world that involved sports.
He rode the bench with his Greensboro, N.C., high school baseball team. He wanted to play football, but he was forced to quit when the managers wouldn’t give him pants that fit.

When he joined the Army’s 101st Airborne Division after high school in 1943, it was not as a fighting man, but as a medical records clerk.

He found himself stationed in Europe with no more battle know-how than basic training. It was there, watching and working with doctors on the front lines, that he decided he wanted to become one of them.

“These guys would be operating in tents with bullets and shrapnel flying around,” Jobe recalled. “There was tremendous noise from the shells going off. There was blood everywhere. These guys became my real heroes.”

Jobe also picked up a principle that he adheres to today, as irritating as it might be to Dodger fans. He will treat any athlete who seeks his help, no matter if it will help that athlete’s team beat the Dodgers.

“If a soldier was wounded, those doctors over there took care of him, even if he was the enemy,” Jobe said. “I consider myself a doctor for individuals, not teams. You don’t use medicine as a means of winning.”

Despite his brief capture and frequent jaunts behind enemy lines, Jobe says he was not even scratched in Europe, which only strengthened his resolve for a career in medicine. After returning home, he attended a junior college in Tennessee, then came to the Los Angeles area to attend La Sierra College and Loma Linda Medical School. After spending three years as a general practitioner to pay off his school loans, he did his orthopedic residency at Los Angeles County Hospital, where he met orthopedic specialist Robert Kerlan.

“I told Dr. Kerlan I wanted to work for him,” Jobe recalled. “He asked me how much salary I wanted. I told him I only wanted what I would make on each patient.”

They called themselves the Southwestern Orthopaedic Medical Group then. Today it is known simply as Kerlan-Jobe, and features 16 doctors and hundreds of patients. The clinic serves most of Los Angeles’ major sports teams, but Jobe concentrates on the Dodgers, who have given him the title of medical director.

Jobe was happy to work in the shadow of the more established Kerlan, but in 1974 he earned prominence by becoming the first doctor to reconstruct a pitching elbow through the use of a tendon transplant. The elbow belonged to Tommy John, and Jobe’s life has not been the same since that operation.

Here’s a description of how the Tommy John surgery came to happen:

Chris Jobe said his dad, who turns 87 today, was performing the surgery in 40 minutes at the end of his career. The first one took three hours, just because it was unplowed ground, if you will.

“But Tommy’s attitude was the special thing,” Frank Jobe said. “He didn’t hesitate. He said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

Options were gone. Trainer Bill Buhler had actually taped up his elbow, as he would an ankle, to allow John to grunt the ball 60 feet, 6 inches. But John knew he couldn’t get major league outs.

Vin Scully watched John run endless, wishful laps in the Astrodome before a game and wondered how John could push this boulder back to normalcy.

Yet John trusted Jobe. The doctor had opened up his elbow in 1972, to clean out bone chips after John had hurt himself sliding. “I was absolutely petrified before that surgery,” John said.

Jobe told John that the new surgery “might” restore his career. “I had been the valedictorian in my high school class,” John said. “I knew might was better than never. There was no downside risk.”

But Jobe also brought in Herb Stark, a hand surgeon who had performed tendon transfers, and other experts, too.

“That’s because I don’t know what I’m doing,” Jobe said.

“I knew right then that’s why I wanted him operating,” John said Sunday. “He admitted to being human.”

Jobe transferred the Palmaris longus [tendon], located in the wrist, and made it into a ligament. figuring it would regenerate itself.

John missed 1975. His first post-op game was a loss, five tentative innings against Atlanta. But he went seven in each of the next three outings and got an L.A. standing ovation when he beat the Pirates on April 26, 1976. “I felt like jumping over the fence,” he said.

And another profile of Jobe’s work:

In 1973, Jobe, who has created a series of widely used shoulder and arm exercises for baseball players, gained attention when he transplanted a tendon from one of John’s arms to the other to repair a torn ligament in his elbow – and save his pitching career.

“The operation was one we developed. He had to have an operation because he couldn’t pitch the way he was. The principle (transplanting a tendon) was good; it’s been used on polio patients,” Jobe said. “He recognized there was no other option if he was going to play.”

“The field of sports medicine is becoming more sophisticated in its approach to diagnosis and treatment,” said Kerlan, team doctor to the Lakers, the Los Angeles Rams and the California Angels and consultant to several other organizations.

One of the biggest medical boons of recent times has been the arthroscope. By inserting a fiber-optic tube down a one-quarter inch incision, doctors can study elbow or knee injuries, for example, without surgery. If an operation is needed, surgeons guided by the scope generally can perform it on an outpatient basis.

“When I first started doing sports medicine, any pitcher who had a scar on his elbow was through. It just seemed like they didn’t want to be operated on for any reason,” said Jobe, physician to the Los Angeles Dodgers and the PGA. “Now they’re more willing to accept it as one of the options.”

As a reward for keeping him whole through thousands of races, the 55-year-old [jockey Bill] Shoemaker presented Kerlan with one of his original whips. The brown-leather whip hangs in the doctor’s office, alongside autographed game balls, ceremonial World Series bats, hockey sticks and team trophies. An old photograph shows Shoemaker, on crutches, and Kerlan standing together.

Among other injuries, Shoemaker fractured his femur in 1968 and his pelvis the following year, when a horse fell on him.

According to Kerlan, care and treatment geared to athletes is a relatively new medical speciality.

Thirty years ago, when an athlete got knocked out, “they put you back in whenever you woke up,” the 64-year-old surgeon said. “That still happens. It shouldn’t, though.”

Kerlan considers Koufax to be the first patient to have focused attention to the special needs of athletes, explaining: “He had enough stature so that attention was brought to his care.

“I remember it was an April Fool’s Day and they (the Dodgers) were in Florida and I was here and Buzzie (Bavasi, the club’s general manager) called and said, ‘Koufax’s elbow is as big as a cantaloupe.’ I said ‘Yeah, April Fool’ and hung up. He called back right away and said ‘Look, this isn’t any joke.’

“They sent Sandy back here and we made the diagnosis of his arthritic elbow and treated it for several years while he continued to play.”

An accomplished high school athlete in Minnesota, Kerlan’s sporting days at UCLA were cut short when congenital – and ultimately crippling – arthritis began affecting him in the late 1930s.

“I got into orthopedics and wanted to subspecialize in sports medicine, but there wasn’t any such thing. It was kind of primitive in those days,” said Kerlan, who relies on crutches and no longer peforms surgery.

In 1965, Kerlan found his focus on treating athletes in such demand that he became partners with Jobe, now 61.

Their clinic has grown to 12 physicians – backed by about 90 staff members – who treat a steady stream of sports figures from across the country and as far away as Japan. They also see their share of “weekend athletes” and non-athletes with orthopedic problems.

In addition, the facility provides doctors for free clinics for local school athletes and for the Biomechanics Laboratory that performs research at next-door Centinela Hospital.

And in closing, two quotes from Frank Jobe. On the abuse a pitcher does to his arm: “When you’re throwing a baseball, you throw it to the maximum your joint will tolerate. If you go beyond that, you get micro-tears in the tendon. When there are enough of these, the tendon begins breaking down faster than Mother Nature builds it up.”

On a way for baseball to limit the incidence of injuries: “Baseball needs a structured training program with lots of instruction regarding mechanics and technique. Baseball demands a different type of training than football. Baseball needs a highly supervised program using light weights in multiple repetitions. Some teams have hired former football weight people. I think that’s a mistake. You bulk up players and they don’t play as well. The end result is worse than if you had not done anything at all.”

Position players
Brett Gardner CF, 29
Eduardo Nunez SS, 26
Robinson Cano 2B, 30
Kevin Youkilis 1B-3B, 34
Vernon Wells LF, 34
Ben Francisco DH, 31
Travis Hafner PH-DH, 36
Ichiro Suzuki RF, 39
Jayson Nix 3B, 30
Lyle Overbay PH-1B, 36
Francisco Cervelli C, 27

pitchers
CC Sabathia, 32
David Phelps, 26
Boone Logan, 28
Shawn Kelley, 29
Joba Chamberlain, 27
Cody Eppley, 27

1965
Position players
Tom Tresh CF, 26
Bobby Richardson 2B, 29
Roger Maris RF, 30
Mickey Mantle LF, 33
Art Lopez PR-LF, 28
Elston Howard C, 36
Joe Pepitone 1B, 24
Clete Boyer 3B, 28
Tony Kubek SS, 29
Phil Linz PH, 26
Hector Lopez PH, 35
Pedro Gonzalez PH, 27

pitchers
Jim Bouton, 26
Hal Reniff, 26
Pete Mikkelsen, 25
Pedro Ramos, 30

I think the Giants deserve the most respect, mostly because they didn’t take taxpayer money to build their new stadium, yet don’t have enormous prices for their tickets. The Giants also went through their decades of title-less seasons before 2010 without creating an identity based on that streak, and have some of the best hitters ever and honor those hitters. They’re not the team I root for the most, but they’re interesting, they’re one of the founding West Coast franchises, and their overall personality right now is one of the best fits for their city you’ll find in MLB.

I asked this question a while ago at Seamheads.com, where people named the Cardinals, and at a chat site, Baseball-Fever.com, where answers were more varied.

The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is the sad end of a sorry episode. One of the game’s greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts. By choosing not to come to a hearing before me, and by choosing not to proffer any testimony or evidence contrary to the evidence and information contained in the report of the Special Counsel to the Commissioner, Mr. Rose has accepted baseball’s ultimate sanction, lifetime ineligibiliy.

This sorry episode began last February when baseball received firm allegations that Mr. Rose bet on baseball games and on the Reds’ games. Such grave charges could not and must never be ignored. Accordingly, I engaged and Mr. Ueberroth appointed John Dowd as Special Counsel to investigate these and any other allegations that might arise and to pursue the truth wherever it took him. I believed then and believe now that such a process, whereby an experienced professional inquires on behalf of the Commissioner as the Commissioner’s agent, is fair and appropriate. To pretend that serious charges of any kind can be responsibly examined by a Commissioner alone fails to recognize the necessity to bring professionalism and fairness to any examination and the complexity a private entity encounters when, without judicial or legal powers, it pursues allegations in the complex, real world.

Baseball had never before undertaken such a process because there had not been such grave allegations since the time of Landis. If one is responsible for protecting the integrity of the game of baseball – that is, the game’s authenticity, honesty and coherence – then the process one uses to protect the integrity of baseball must itself embody that integrity.

I sought by means of a Special Counsel of proven professionalism and integrity, who was obliged to keep the subject of the investigation and his representatives informed about key information, to create a mechanism whereby the integrity we sought to protect was itself never violated. Similarly, in writing to Mr. Rose on May 11, I designed, as is my responsibility, a set of procedures for a hearing that would have afforded him every opportunity to present statements or testimony of witnesses or any other evidence he saw fit to answer the information and evidence presented in the Report of the Special Counsel and its accompanying materials.

That Mr. Rose and his counsel chose to pursue a course in the courts rather than appear at hearings scheduled for May 25 and then June 26, and then chose to come forward with a stated desire to settle this matter is now well known to all. My purpose in recounting the process and the procedures animating that process is to make two points that the American public deserves to know:

First, that the integrity of the game cannot be defended except by a process that itself embodies integrity and fairness; Second, should any other occasion arise where charges are made or acts are said to be committed that are contrary to the interests of the game or that undermine the integrity of baseball, I fully intend to use such a process and procedure to get to the truth and, if need be, to root out offending behavior. I intend to use, in short, every lawful and ethical means to defend and protect the game.

I say this so that there may be no doubt about where I stand or why I stand there. I believe baseball is a beautiful and exciting game, loved by millions – I among them -and I believe baseball is an important, enduring American institution. It must assert and aspire to the highest principles – of integrity, of professionalism of performance, of fair play within its rules. It will come as no surprise that like any institution composed of human beings, this institution will not always fulfill its highest aspirations. I know of no earthly institution that does. But this one, because it is so much a part of our history as a people and because it has such a purchase on our national soul, has an obligation to the people for whom it is played – to its fans and well-wishers – to strive for excellence in all things and to promote the highest ideals.

I will be told that I am an idealist. I hope so. I will continue to locate ideals I hold for myself and for my country in the national game as well as in other of our national institutions. And while there will be debate and dissent about this or that or another occurrence on or off the field, and while the game’s nobler parts will always be enmeshed in the human frailties of those who, whatever their role, have stewardship of this game, let there be no doubt or dissent about our goals for baseball or our dedication to it. Nor about our vigilance and vigor – and patience – in protecting the game from blemish or stain or disgrace.

The matter of Mr. Rose is now closed. It will be debated and discussed. Let no one think that it did not hurt baseball. That hurt will pass, however, as the great glory of the game asserts itself and a resilient institution goes forward. Let it also be clear that no individual is superior to the game.

And Rose’s statement:
I’d like to apologize for this controversy lingering on into the ’89 season. I hope it didn’t detract from the championship season of the 12 teams in the National League and I hope it didn’t detract from the All-Star Game. I know now it won’t detract from the upcoming playoffs and the showcase of baseball, the World Series.

I made some mistakes and I think I’m being punished for those mistakes. However, the settlement is fair – especially the wording that says they have no finding that I bet on baseball. It’s something I told the commissioner back in February and I’ve told you people the last four months. My only regret up to this time is I will not have the opportunity to tell my side of the story. However, I would add, I will tell my side of the story in the very near future.

I’d like to thank you people, as members of the media, for understanding me as a player, for trying to understand me as a manager. I’m hoping that you would give the guy that replaces me the benefit of the doubt as he takes over a very young, banged up baseball team.

My life is baseball. I hope to get back into baseball as soon as I possibly can. I’m looking forward to that. I’ve never looked forward to a birthday like I’m looking forward to my new daughter’s birthday, ’cause two days after that is when I can apply for reinstatement.

I looked up his name, and found little. But there is this, from the Conlon collection of baseball photos:

“Although his major league career consisted of only two games, Witt ‘Lefty’ Guise, a southpaw from Arkansas, had to overcome steep odds to do that much. After his second year in the minors leagues (1931), he blew out his shoulder in a fishing boat mishap, and he couldn’t throw at all for several years. Eventually he started pitching semi-pro ball, developing a knuckleball and screwball to compensate for loss of velocity. It took until 1939 for him to get a professional contract, but in 1939-40 he had a combined record of 28-13 and an ERA under 3, so the Cincinnati Reds brought him to Cincinnati during the September pennant drive in 1940. In his first outing, on September 3, he pitched 4 1/3 innings of relief against the Cardinals, allowing six hits but just one run. Ten days later he got another chance, relieving at the Polo Grounds in the third inning with the Reds ahead by a run. He pitched into the sixth inning, yielding only an unearned run, and would have been awarded the Win under today’s guidelines. On that day, the reliever who followed Guise got the credit, but his consolation prize was a single off future Hall of Famer Carl Hubbell. He continued his minor league career through 1951, minus four years of World War II military service, and finished with 117 wins, 111 of them after his shoulder injury.”

Guise had his contract bought by the Reds while pitching for the Columbia, S.C., farm team, in the South Atlantic (Sally) League, in late August, 1940. He’d gone 13-5 for Columbia, and was 32, a lefty knuckleballer. He was not on the postseason roster when the Reds won the World Series, and 1940 was his only MLB season.

I did find a story about that single off Hubbell in Three Men on Third: A Book of Baseball Anecdotes, Oddities and Curiosities by H. Allen Smith, Ira L. Smith and Leo Herschfield (2000). Guise, on a 2-2 count against Hubbell at the Polo Grounds, knocked a single through the infield between first and second.

The book quotes him saying: “A man like me, getting a hit off Hubbell-it’s a miracle. I got the ball-gonna save it to show people-the one I hit off Hubbell. Lord, what a good feeling! I just feel like doing something good for somebody. Believe I will.”

He sent a dollar to the Salvation Army. Soon he’d be a staff sergeant in the real Army, in World War II, and that’s how he’s identified on his gravestone in Little Rock National Cemetery.