The Hit King never made it to baseball’s Hall of Fame. Did a stubborn, self-inflicted saga need to play out this way?

But the christening of Rose as "Charlie Hustle" was anything but complimentary. In a spring training game against New York that year, Rose bunted for a single, much to the amusement of Yankee's great Mickey Mantle and teammate Whitey Ford. From O'Brien's book:

Pete Rose makes for a fascinating on-field study -- a player whose reputation changed even as his game stayed the same.