Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball

Sports biographies don’t get much better than this enthralling and tragic account of the career of Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader. Sportswriter O’Brien (Paradise Falls) describes how Rose was pressed from an early age by his father (whose own dreams of a pro baseball career were never realized) to excel at sports. Despite being small for his age, Rose had an exceptional drive and passion that helped him excel on the citywide team he played with in his teens. After a few years in the minor leagues, Rose earned a spot on the Cincinnati Reds in 1963 and was named the National League’s Rookie of the Year. The portrait that emerges is empathetic yet balanced, with breathless recaps of Rose’s first championship season in 1975 and 44-game hitting streak in 1978 tempered by troubling discussions of his yearslong affair with an underage high schooler when he was in his 30s and the gambling addiction that left him barred from induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame (in 2004, Rose confirmed allegations that he bet on the Reds while playing for and managing the team in the 1980s). O’Brien movingly depicts Rose as an everyman who willed his own greatness only to succumb to his baser impulses, and the rich research draws on extensive interviews with players, federal investigators, and Rose himself. Definitive and elegantly told, this is a home run. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment. (Mar.)