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By Christopher Witflee
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On Aug. 24, 1989, the shape and color of baseball in Cincinnati began to change forever. Before that date, Cincinnatians treasured professional baseball as their invention and birthright, an inherited seat of local traditions and privileges. Today, professional baseball in Cincinnati is a spiteful, petty interloper, greedy and untrustworthy in its assault on the ballast the Reds once provided in the community.
On Aug. 24, 1989, baseball's then-Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti announced that local demigod Pete Rose accepted a lifetime suspension that contained no finding Rose had damaged baseball's competitive integrity by betting on any of its games, let alone Reds games. Moments later, asked if he thought Rose bet on baseball games, Giamatti, from the commissioner's podium, said, yes, it was his belief Rose had bet on baseball.
This was a raw deal, the type of episode by which the commissioner's office undermined its moral authority to rule on Pete Rose -- and that is saying something. Later, the Hall of Fame excluded people suspended from baseball as members of the pantheon, a rule aimed squarely at Rose after the fact.
Ten years later, baseball has yet to issue official findings of Rose's guilt, as if a well-founded preponderance of belief is sufficient grounds for eternal punishment. Baseball continues to play fast and loose with fairness on the matter, so much that one questions the present commissioner's conscience and sense of proportion. It's way too easy to imagine that, in Bud Selig's world, it was Rose, rather than a five-pack-per-day cigarette habit, that sent Giamatti to his early death.
One year after Rose applied for reinstatement, baseball has yet to even grant a hearing. Selig thinks he is upholding Giamatti's honor. By most accounts, Rose is supposed to "admit" he bet on baseball. In other words, he's supposed to comply with a story baseball signed away before sneaking it in at the press conference. On such admission, it is supposed Rose will greet a long reception line of dignitaries who want so much to "forgive" him for a deed baseball couldn't prosecute on the straight.
Meanwhile, Reds fans and Cincinnati natives are left to twist in the wind with their fallen idol, disgraced and abused by a system of intensely personal politics. Though Reds fans identify strongly with Rose, they might feel betrayed by him if baseball could have prosecuted cleanly and above board. Instead, local fans feel cheated.
Rose, of course, was never the beginning and end of baseball in Cincinnati, but he was just about everything in between. He defined the Big Red Machine clubs, his departure preceeded the Reds' descent to 101 losses in 1982, his return as player/manager revived interest in the club and his suspension hovers above the tiny crowds watching the Reds contend today at Cinergy Field.
The Rose affair preceeded more Major League assaults on Cincinnati's sense of order. Cincinnatians used to love it that the National League season always opened in town on an April Monday afternoon, an observance of the city's special status as the birthplace of professional baseball. Beginning with the reign of Peter Ueberroth as commissioner, baseball was less inclined to observe such niceties.
If Cincinnatians aren't historians through and through, they were attached to baseball through symbols and traditions, particularly concerning Opening Day. Marge Schott, who is about to sell the club, won points with the public for her vigilance on the matter. Back in the day, you loved the way Cincinnati celebrated Opening Day. If you were a baseball fan living in Cincinnati, it was very much worth celebrating.
But Cincinnati's Opening Day tradition began to erode when the owners locked out the players at the beginning of the 1990 season. The stalemate was settled in late March, followed by a decision to just pick up the schedule a week late, when the Reds were slated to be in Houston.
In 1994, Major League Baseball compromised Opening Day by design, but not without Schott's amusing defiance. As part of a huge deal with ESPN, baseball agreed to open the season with a Sunday evening prime-time telecast. Schott lobbied for the game to be in Cincinnati, then refused to promote it, pitching the next afternoon's game as the "traditional" opener.
Schott has certainly been a pain in baseball's neck. She has seldom gone along with the program and, much more often than not, baseball's embarrassment at her behavior is merited. But it was gratifying to see her thumb her nose at the sport over Opening Day. She couldn't stop baseball from diminishing a Cincinnati tradition for good, but she could take one last jab before baseball began moving the National League opener elsewhere.
Like Rose, Schott is a native Cincinnatian who fell to baseball's wrath. Though Rose and Schott both might be of questionable fiber, they are natives of a city in which the natives are quite proud of being such. Baseball's sanctions against Rose and Schott are, in that sense, sanctions against the city itself. Baseball's avarice, which diminished Cincinnati's Opening Day tradition, is a slap against the city, too.
So, in 10 years, we have seen Major League Baseball inflict change on a city and its people, who resist change, crave order and wish to leave the world the way they found it. The Reds were the lifeblood of the city. Whatever it was to live in Cincinnati, it had a lot to do with sitting in Riverfront Stadium on a summer night with the moon overhead, watching the Reds, knowing the city meant as much to baseball as baseball meant to the city.
Ten years ago, baseball took out Pete Rose. Then, baseball took out Opening Day. Now, baseball is taking out Marge Schott. In between, baseball has taken out the integrity of the championship season, twice, by labor dispute. Today, it would seem, Cincinnati means nothing to baseball. And Cincinnati resents it.
Has baseball alienated Cincinnati? Unquestionably. Has the world around Cincinnati changed? Of course. With Cleveland and Atlanta now among the highest-drawing clubs in the Major Leagues, the Reds have lost their regional pull. Add to that the discontent Cincinnatians feel toward baseball, and it's no wonder the Reds don't draw.
Throughout the summer of 1989, as the commissioner's office closed in on Rose, you could hear the people calling, over and over again, the same refrain: "Pete Rose is baseball." It was never, strictly speaking, true, of course. But in this town, it had more than a grain of truth. It still does.
Baseball in Cincinnati has created some electrifying moments over the last 10 years. One was a championship moment, that great wire-to-wire season in 1990, right on the heels of Rose's suspension. The other was on Labor Day 1997, when Rose returned to the stadium as Pete Rose Jr. made his Major League debut.
The people who have caretaken the Reds in the 1990s have done their best, despite Schott's irascibility and mismanagement. But there is only so much they can do. The people of Cincinnati have seldom said they were mad at the Reds. They have always said they are mad at baseball.
This week, the mass media is observing the 10-year anniversary of Rose's suspension. If only that were all there was to it. It's the 10-year anniversary of baseball's estrangement from the city where the game was first played professionally.
The Reds are contending before an average home house of 24,000 and change. They play better on the road. Though the team has its loyal fans and millions are tracking the club's exploits in pursuit of a pennant, baseball and Cincinnati no longer are snug.
On top of the rest, the scale on which the Major League operate has exceeded Cincinnati's parameters. The Texas Rangers will do $60 million at the gate and bemoan a decrease in attendance to an average of better than 35,000.
The Reds will do about $20 million at the gate. They'd do cartwheels over a $30 million gate, and average attendance of 35,000 would raise cheer that Cincinnati is back as a baseball town.
Ten years ago, baseball blacklisted Pete Rose. It might as well have blacklisted Cincinnati, for all that's happened since. Or has Cincinnati blacklisted baseball?
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