The 12th Inning

Fifty-six years ago this week, two men had dinner together in Cincinnati.

One was a hometown boy with a bad haircut and a motor that never shut off. The other was a 23-year-old catcher from Ohio, an All-Star for the first time, sitting at the table like a kid invited to eat with the grownups.

Pete Rose and Ray Fosse.

They stayed up past midnight talking baseball. Rose's wife made them food. By all accounts it was a fine evening between two men who barely knew each other.

Twenty-four hours later, Rose broke him.

You know the play even if you weren't born yet. July 14, 1970. The All-Star Game at brand-new Riverfront Stadium, that big concrete ashtray on the Ohio River. Where I grew up in Bell County, the Reds were religion. If you had a radio and a porch, you had a rooting interest.

Twelfth inning. Tied 4-4. Rose on second, two outs. Jim Hickman slaps a single to center, and Rose comes around third like a man running from a house fire.

The throw and the runner arrive at home plate at about the same time.

Fosse is standing in the baseline, waiting on the ball. Rose doesn't slide. He lowers his shoulder and hits him like a coal truck taking out a mailbox.

Fosse goes flying. Rose touches the plate. National League wins, 5-4, and the hometown crowd loses its mind.

I am and always will be a Pete Rose fan, but there’s something about that play that still bothers me, all these years later.

It was an exhibition game.

Nothing was at stake. Not a pennant, not a playoff spot, not a dime. It was a summer showcase, the baseball equivalent of church homecoming, and Rose played it like Game 7.

The old newspaper man in me, the skeptic, says that's exactly why people loved Pete Rose. He didn't have an exhibition speed. Charlie Hustle ran out on walks, for crying out loud. Asking him to ease up at home plate was like asking a beagle to walk past a rabbit.

But the witness in me remembers what it cost.

Fosse's shoulder was fractured and separated. The X-rays missed it at first, so he kept catching. Played hurt because that's what you did in 1970, when the trainer's kit was aspirin and a shrug. He'd hit 16 home runs before the break that year. He was 23, and people were saying Johnny Bench things about him.

The power never came back. He played another nine seasons, won two rings with Oakland, became a beloved broadcaster. Good life. Good man. But that swing, the one that was going to make him famous?

It stayed in the dirt at Riverfront.

Rose never apologized, not really. His line for fifty years was some version of "I play the game one way." The two of them stayed cordial-to-frosty the rest of their lives, and every July some TV producer would run the clip again, and Fosse would answer the same questions again, polite as ever, his shoulder aching on rainy days.

Fosse passed in 2021. Rose in 2024. The argument outlived them both.

And it's a real argument. Was that play the purest thing baseball ever produced, a man who simply could not pretend to care less than everything? Or was it a grown man wrecking a kid's career to win a game that didn't count, in front of his home crowd, one day after eating at the man's table?

I've flipped on it more times than a porch thermometer in April.

Most days I land here: I admire the hustle. I just wish it had picked a different night.

Baseball played its All-Star Game again this week. The stars smiled, swaped jerseys, and treated the whole thing like a company picnic. Some old-timer on the broadcast might have  grumbled that nobody plays it like Pete anymore.

Ray Fosse could have told you why.

Wayne Knuckles has edited and published newspapers in Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia. He currently publishes a free weekly newsletter about Appalachian history, news, food and travel. You can sign up for free at www.thewaynetrain.com.