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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday September 30, 2002 Volume IV Number 39 |
FOCUS - Rose in Exile
We pulled into Cincinnati after nine-thirty on Monday night this week. It’s a big, old city. Like time warp for me, reminiscent of the days I lived in the heart of Chicago decades ago.
We turned off the Interstate into the downtown district, down the narrow boulevards between the tall buildings, lit and glowing in the dark. Neon signs illuminating the concrete at street level. Even this late, the city buzzing and in perpetual motion. To our surprise, hundreds, maybe thousands of pedestrians filled the sidewalks, all moving in the same direction, heading away from what appeared to be the same place.
It was my first visit to Cinci. “What are all these people doing out on a Monday night?” I asked out loud.
“I have no idea,” my business colleague replied. We were headed to the downtown Westin for a couple days’ of training in a new program.
I saw a lot of red. Red caps. Red shirts. Red jackets. Red jerseys. People heading home, laughing and joking, holding souvenirs and flags and banners with a bounce in their step as though reflecting on a really good time somewhere. Then I noticed the number 14 on the back of one, and then another. Four letters arched over the number fourteen, all in caps, R O S E. Red Rose, I thought. Pete Rose. This is Cincinnati, I realized.
“Wasn’t Pete Rose banned from baseball?” I asked.
“Sure was,” Greg said. “For life. But we are in Cinci. The people still love the guy.”
We remained somewhat perplexed until the next morning when the Cincinnati Enquirer filled us in.
Cinergy Field, still known to the locals as Riverfront Coliseum (it’s a sign of the times that the great urban stadiums have all become billboards for corporate America), is about to be torn down. It won’t take long for the wrecking balls and cranes and bulldozers to bust it up, haul away the concrete and the bricks and the steel. It’s an aging relic, we’re told, unsafe. Built to standards a nearly century old, it can not be adequately restored. It must be replaced. The new design will bear witness to much of the nostalgia and pay its own kind of tribute to the memories of Riverfront, the architects claim. But the old must go. A new age of baseball is coming to Cincinnati, like all the other cities across America.
On Sunday night, the Cincinnati Reds played Philadelphia Phillies to a full house. It was the last game of the season, but more important to long time Cincinnati residents, it was the last game at Riverfront. Well, the last official game.
On Sunday’s historic night, there were ceremonies and recognition of the living legends who made baseball history on the giant stadium field. Impossible catches and sizzling throws from way out in the corner and game winning homers and blazing strike-outs and rhubarbs behind the plate and humbling tags and guys swarming the mound in victory celebrations as a packed stadium roared. The electronic organ played and the announcer’s voice echoed and peanut shells crunched underfoot as the crowd stood at the seventh inning and sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” one last time. Under the bright lights, the city remembered.
But the greatest Cincinnati hero of them all was missing; no where to be found that memorable night. Not in the dugout. Not in the box seats behind home plate. Not on the field lined up with the dignitaries and retired aging hometown veterans. No honorable mention in the recitation of Cinci’s greatest moments, or in the video highlights replayed in living color on the Jumbotron all during the game. It was the elephant in the stadium no one talked about, well, publicly. It was the talk of the fans in the stands.
Pete Rose. The King of Hits. Charlie Hustle.
Gone. Banished.
Even here.
Even this night.
That was Sunday. This was Monday.
* * * * * *
It’s been thirteen years since the final ruling came down from the Commissioner of Baseball. A. Bartlett Giamatti announced the ban on August 10, 1989. Eight days later, tragically, the Commissioner dropped dead of a heart attack. Some say the ordeal involving Pete Rose broke his heart. Literally.
Pete’s personal life was
a mess. Most people knew it. Even Pete agreed. He had tax problems, debt
problems, drinking problems, family problems, a gambling addiction, and perhaps
most telling of all, he was belligerent about it all. His primary response to
questions about his personal life was deny, deny, deny.
“What?” he would ask with the sound of innocence in his voice, feigned surprise that anyone might be curious about the rumors floating around his hometown like ominous dark storm clouds. “It’s all a pack of lies,” he liked to say. “All of it.” He add the punctuation just in case anyone was unsure.
But the evidence mounted with every denial. His attorneys could barely stem the tide. Rose relied mainly on his remarkable record, a career that would ever be in the record books – over four thousand career hits, the 1976 World Series victory, and twenty years of hustle on the field. Pete Rose was Cincinnati. He represented the grit and determination and pride of this working class town. They were a forgiving crowd. Pete’s indiscretions did not diminish the affection his fans felt. In fact, his troubles only endeared him to them. His fight with the media and the federal agencies and the legal system and even the Baseball rules-makers, well, that fight was their fight, too. He was victimized by pointy headed smooth talking professionals from snooty colleges and high-browed high-rise offices making their careers on the problems of a hard working guy just trying to make get by. Pete's fans could identify.
But Pete’s greatest affront to the game was the allegation that he had bet on his own team.
It’s an appalling, despicable crime against the sport primarily because it gives opportunity for one to capitalize on a deliberate act which would effect the outcome. Simply put, a timely intentional error results in the loss of the game but a win on the bet.
Thirteen years later, both Rose’s denials and the mountain of convincing evidence remain in sharp conflict.
Pete continues to be hopeful that the court of baseball will show mercy. Some of his attorneys insist he could be exonerated before a judge, but only on a technicality.
But while the experts argue the merits of the case on either side, to this day Rose is beloved on the streets of Cincinnati.
When the city bid farewell to Riverfront Stadium, Rose was conspicuously uninvited. But they threw another party anyway. The next night.
Their own way.
* * * * * * *
It was a softball game.
The Commissioner of Baseball had no authority. It was well out of his jurisdiction.
On third base, Pete Rose. Number 14. Red cap and jersey.
It was a Monday night sell-out.
The crowd never sat down. All seven innings.
His fans say Pete Rose, unlike today’s baseball superstars, didn’t play for the money. He played for a love of the game.
So it was a full house. Including some of Pete’s loyal friends.
* * * * * * *
I don’t know how to resolve the conflict of Pete Rose. He certainly drew in the fans. When he was in his baseball prime, gave Cincinnati a sense of pride. He rallied the town together in unforgettable ways.
But on a personal level, Pete is hardly a role model. Seems to me that if he had owned up to his personal problems way back then, he would have found a forgiving public, and he would have avoided a significant portion of the suffering and alienation of the past decade.
Martha Stewart is hardly a parallel, except in her insistence that she has been wrongly accused. Most everyone knows that her denials do not ring true. She started her career as a stock broker, and she knows all about insider trading and limit orders. Why didn’t she just confess in the beginning and take her lumps and apologize to the people who depend on her?
The fines and the returns would only require a small portion of her net worth; certainly much less than the impact of diminished value on her company stock which has certainly been the consequence of a loss of confidence in her investors.
High profile leaders have a duty to come clean about problems in the back room. When they refuse, it gets ugly.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
It is human nature to cover up. To rationalize. To grade ourselves on the curve. (“Yeah, I made some mistakes, but compared to the rest of the world, it’s pretty minor.) To lay low. To block it out.
Pete Rose has paid an awful price. His record on the field puts him in the company of legends named to the Hall of Fame. But his banishment, at least to date, has prevented him from receiving the honors many believe he’s earned. Hall of Fame will wait. Martha Stewart maintains her game face, but her position as one of the most admired women in America is in serious jeopardy.
How about you? Are you owning up? Am I?
In these troubled economic times, belligerence doesn’t help. Open, honest assessment; dealing with the hard realities of leadership; these are the hallmarks of integrity.
And integrity never goes out of style.
Posted in Valley Center, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2002
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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