Daryle Ward, son of Gary and object of white hot manlove around these parts, has tested the mettle of all that is right by signing with the White Sox.
As I googled around to confirm my fear that the Fat Kangaroo had sold himself out to Meth Head Nation, I came across this.
Keep in mind: Pete Rose Jr. left the Bears because Ward was getting all of the playing time at first base. Now that Ward has left, there is a void at that position. Rose told me Saturday he wants to continue playing, but just wasn’t going to get into regular action in Newark. Hopefully the Bears didn’t burn a bridge with Rose, who has been an excellent A.L. player over the years. More and more guys are going to leave the Bears, especially when you stockpile this much talent. I hope Raines has a good handle on this.
Now, let’s disregard the overly earnest reporting on the inner working of the Newark Bears’ conundrum for a moment (I mean really, who knew there could be so much intrigue with the Bears of Newark? Will Tim Raines survive? Will Bobby Hill ever not suck?) and consider the fact that Pete Rose’s kid is still playing semipro ball.
My mind explodes with questions.
Is he still trying to make the big leagues? According to BB-Ref (and I’m glad I checked because I had long thought that the closest Rose Jr. had come to making the bigs was as a picket crosser in 1995), Charlie Hustle’s kid was promoted by his hometown Cincinnati Reds in what could obviously not have been an exploitive promotional stunt in 1997, and went 2-for-16. Even though his two hits were against ;two pretty good pitchers in Kevin Appier and Jason Schmidt, Rose’s own dad probably wouldn’t have bet on him sticking. And that was twelve years ago.
If he’s not harboring any illusions about making the Show, why is he still playing? Excuse me, but he’s 39. Does he really have nothing else going on? Sure, I suppose Rickey Henderson is liable to drop his 50-year-old ass into Newark at any time, but Rickey at 90 has a better chance of playing in the bigs than Pete at 40.
Is he trying to make it as a coach? Not to put the sins of the father on the son, but I’m not sure anybody would want to associate with Rose, unless he’s really smart which, at first glace, I’m not so sure of. For one, his dad was Pete Rose who, for all of his awesomeness as a player (and, say what you will about Rose as person–he’s pretty much a charter Hall of Fame douchebag–but he was an intensely awesome player), he was never exactly the the most intelligent person in the room. Sure, as a player/manager, Rose’s Reds teams finished over .500 in each of his full seasons from 1985-1988, but Rose was also buried to the neck in Daily Racing Forms everyday. Junior has already gotten popped for dealing date-rape narcotics. And while drug trafficking can yield a lot of money, it’s also pretty stupid. Combine this with the fact that poor Rose Jr. is probably beaten down so much from his asshole dad being on national TV and parading him out as the batboy and such and probably heaping so much abuse on him as a young kid playing baseball himself (seriously, how much would it suck to have Pete Rose as your dad? I imagine it to be worse than the Great Santini), and I don’t know why Junior would think of himself as coach material.
What will he do when he can no longer play and nobody will hire him as coach? What’s sad is that for all of his dad’s fame and success, he likely has little left for his son to live off of. Having already gotten convicted of drug dealing once, Rose Jr. can’t go back, unless he’s willing to ride it out as career criminal which, come to think of it, may well be his fate. Now that he’s thrown a hissy fit because he couldn’t handle being behind the awesomeness that is Daryle Ward, we may find out soon enough.
