Collision at Home Plate: The Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti

The backgrounds of the two adversaries could scarcely be more unlike: the late Giamatti, son of a university professor, educated on both sides of the Atlantic, a Renaissance scholar, onetime Yale professor and president who abandoned academe to preside over first one and then both of baseball's major leagues; and Rose, son of a semipro sports star bank clerk, uneducated beyond high school, unlettered and ungrammatical, who set a new record for total hits in a career and gambled away tens of thousands of dollars. Adversaries they became; in 1989 it fell to Giammati to ban Rose from organized baseball. Reston ( The Lone Star ) tells both their stories well and fairly, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of the two men and reluctantly concluding that there was proof of Rose's gambling and income tax evasion, and that Giamatti's decision, based chiefly on moral grounds, was right. The book is an effective portrayal of two careers on a collision course. Photos not seen by PW. (June)