WEBVTT

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Cunningham, the great American picking up
the pieces of the greatest Reds Opening Day.

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Ever, I'm not sure how we
can ever repeat that. It's the

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weather, the Jim Scott situation,
which was fabulous, the game itself,

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and although Keith O'Brien, my guest
here is a Saint X guy, I

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don't know the last time there was
a color analyst from Muller High School talking

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about manager David Bell from Muller High
School with Bruce Souter on the mound finishing

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the game from Muller High School.
That has never happened before. I say

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that will never happen again anywhere in
life. But until then, Charlie Hustle

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is the name of the book.
It is the defenditive story of Pete Rose's

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rise and fall. The Wall Street
Journal said quote, I'm not sure there's

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ever been a book that does a
better job of sketching out Pete Rose than

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Keith O'Brien's Charlie Hustle. And Keith
O'Brien, welcome to the Bill Cunningham Show.

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Off the air. You told me
you're a sat X guy, graduated

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in nineteen ninety one, but you
have vivid memories of Pete Rose. First

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of all, why did you think
another book had to be written about Pete

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Rose? Well, thanks for having
me, Bill, great to be back

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with you. You know, I
feel like all too often people have looked

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at Pete's story through the prism of
baseball, and I want to be clear,

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there's a lot of baseball in my
book. But what I wanted to

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do here was look at him as
a man. You know, this is

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the story of an ordinary man from
an ordinary working class neighborhood on the West

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Side, a man of ordinary talents
who is never the best player on his

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own youth baseball teams, who climbs
and scrapes and claws his way to the

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top of the mountain, and then, mostly through his own poor choices,

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poor decisions, and addictions, loses
it. All. That is, you

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know, more than just a baseball
story. You know, that's honestly,

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Bill, in my opinion, it's
a Greek tragedy that just happened to play

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out in and around a baseball feel. And you know, I felt if

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I could get access to Rose,
if I could get access to the people

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who were in his inner circle,
and if I could tell that story from

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the inside, that could be a
powerful and compelling tale. And through my

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research here on Charlie Hustle, you
know, I have you know, found

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things that have you know, never
been written about before. And you,

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in the format of this you interviewed, you have one hundred and fifty hours

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of interviews with the people who Pete
best twenty seven hours of interviews with Pete

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Rose himself until he stopped it.
If somebody when Pete Rose was thirteen,

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fourteen years old playing little league baseball, he didn't have much of an arm.

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It wasn't very fast, had no
power. If somebody would say when

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he was fourteen fifteen sixteen in Western
Hills, Bold Face Parking, see that

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guy right over, that little guy
right there, he's going to be the

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greatest baseball hitter of all time.
Nobody would have believed it. So talk

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about your access to Pete and how
things went south at one point. Then

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I want to get into many specifics. Yeah, So, you know,

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I, as you said, I
interviewed anyone I could who would crossed through

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you know, his orbit in the
nineteen sixties, seventies, and eighties,

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and of course I wanted to interview
Pete. And you know, I figured

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that would be a challenge because Pete
has never spoken before for a book that

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he did not have editorial control over, you know. But you know,

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Pete's you know, I think recognized
what I was trying to do, and

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he certainly appreciated you know, my
my Cincinnati roots and and and he did

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grant me twenty seven hours of recorded
interviews in person and on the phone.

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And we didn't have a falling out. Bill. I don't know what happened,

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but I was pushing him, you
know, I was pushing him into

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the you know, the dark corners
of his life. And I don't mean

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that in a nefarious way. I
just mean that, you know, I

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feel that if Pete's you know,
can can reveal more about why he did

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these things, people might understand it
better. And I think maybe that I

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just pushed Pete a little too much. But I agree with you though about

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what you said about you know,
if you'd seen him on the West Side

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of nineteen forties and fifties, nobody
would have picked him out as the player.

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Nobody, nobody you in access to
Pete Rose in late twenty twenty one

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able to conduct all those hours of
interviews and were Red's ownership and talk about

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nineteen seventy five, seventy six.
That's the hallmark of Red's baseball up to

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this point. I hope the glory
days lie ahead, but nonetheless, fifty

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years ago talk about Red's ownership and
managers, et cetera. Concerned about Pete

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Rose's gambling. Then, Yeah,
So one thing I wanted to do with

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this book was go back and remind
readers why we ever cared about Pete Rose

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in the first place. You know, in the last thirty five years,

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as Pete has made poor decisions,
he's sort of become a caricature of himself.

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And I think baseball fans and even
Cincinnatians have forgotten why we ever cared

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in the first place. So to
go back and to chart that rise.

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And of course, you know,
he's at the peak of that rise,

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right Bill nineteen seventy five, seventy
six. And and but even while this

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is happening, there are already concerns
about his behavior off the field, his

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behavior specifically with with gamblers, but
also you know, with the mistresses in

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his life. And you know,
based on my reporting, by the mid

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nineteen seventies, those things were open
secrets in the Reds clubhouse and even in

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the Reds ownership box. And based
on my reporting in nineteen seventy eight,

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right around the time that Pete began
his forty four game hit streak, a

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hit streak that we haven't seen the
likes of, by the way, since

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nineteen seventy eight, there was some
kind of intervention in the office of Red's

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president Dick Wagner. Major League Baseball
sent a representative who was the head of

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security for Major League Baseball at that
time, and the discussion that day in

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Dick Wagner's office was about gambling and
gambling debts. And you know this,

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of course is you know, eleven
years before Pete's problems his addiction, frankly

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will will make you know, national
headlines in nineteen seventy eight. Whatever happens

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that day in Dick Wagner's office makes
no headlines at all. And as far

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as the Reds wanting to cut ties
with Pete Rose was his off field behavior.

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I guess the numerous affairs and cheating
on his wife, et cetera.

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Wasn't They're real focus on it.
I think a lot of baseball players and

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a lot of people in radio,
TV and authors of books do exactly the

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same thing. But the issue was
did Pete's gambling and seventy eight have something

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to do with the Reds deciding to
let him go. Yeah, let's remember

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what's happened in nineteen seventy eight.
The longtime general manager, Bob Hauseum has

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stepped down. Bob Hausum loved Pete
Rose and who was taken over as the

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president of the Reds, but Hausum's
deputy all these years Dick Wagner. And

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you know, Dick Wagner had a
puritanical streak to him, He had sort

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of a militant streak to him,
and Dick Wagner had never really been fond

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of Pete Rose. You know,
Pete was not Dick Wagner's favorite flavor of

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ice cream. And so these two
guys, you know, don't get along

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already, but absolutely based on my
reporting, you know, you know,

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Wagner is concerned, he's concerned about
Pete's behavior off the field, and you

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know, by the end of that
year, you know, he makes the

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roads no real offer. You know, this is the first first time Pete

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Rose is going to be an unrestricted
free agent. You know, he's going

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to go test the market. There
are lucrative offers out there from Philadelphia,

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Atlanta, Kansas City, Pittsburgh.
He's not going to get a lucrative offer

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from Cincinnati. Because Dick Wagner doesn't
want Pete Rose around anymore. They made

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that decision to get rid of him. And then he goes to Philadelphia and

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wins the national title again, he
wins the World Series in Philadelphia. Did

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his behavior of gambling continue in Philadelphia? And it was not an issue there?

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You know, it's clear that you
know, Pete has routinely been betting

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with bookies going all the way back
to the early nineteen seventies, you know,

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based on my interviews with Pete,
in interviews I did with others,

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you know, it begins on the
West Side, you know, with a

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with a man named Alfonse Esselmon al
Esslman, who was a well known bookie

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in Cincinnati in the nineteen sixties and
seventies. Uh. And it does continue

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deep into the eighties, you know, through the Phillies years, through even

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his one brief year in Montreal,
and and by nineteen eighty five, eighty

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six, eighty seven, based on
reporting I did, interviews I did with

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three different men who placed his bets
on baseball and and and including my own

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review of a of a betting notebook
that one of these men capped. Pete

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is betting a ton. And you
know, we all know now about gambling.

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We can do it on our phones. You know, everybody can do

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it on their phones right now in
Ohio, you know, And and even

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the every day better knows you can't
look at the rack of baseball games today

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and place wagers on ten or twelve
games and hope that that's going to go

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well for you. It's not going
to go well for you. And you

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know, unfortunately, by the mid
nineteen eighties, that's what Pete is doing.

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He is he is placing bets on
eight, ten, twelve games a

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day. And this was at a
time when any gambler didn't have access to

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the information we have today. You
know, he's placing bets on games he

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knows very little about, and he's
losing a lot of money. Bill you

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know, at points in nineteen eighty
six, based on my reporting, the

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review of this notebook, an interview
with the man who kept with this notebook,

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you know, Pete's losing as much
as thirty thousand dollars a week.

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And that's at a time when he's
only making a half million dollars a year

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as the Reds Reds manager, So
it's a lot of money. Keith O'Brien,

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did he bet on baseball while in
uniform for the Reds and the Phillies.

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This is under great dispute, and
Pete is adamant that his betting on

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baseball begins in October nineteen eighty six, during the playoffs that year, the

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two months after his last at bat
as a player. Based on my reporting,

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the review of this betting notebook and
the interview and an interview with the

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man who kept this notebook, Pete's
betting on baseball begins at a minimum in

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early nineteen eighty six, not long
after opening day. And it begins bill

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because Pete right now, at this
time in nineteen eighty six, betting on

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March Madness, betting on college basketball
does poorly. He loses a lot of

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money in March nineteen eighty six betting
on basketball, and coming into that spring,

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it seems that his choice to maybe
crawl out of that hole is to

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bet on baseball, to bet on
the one thing he knew the most about.

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And this is thirty thousand dollars a
week net. So if he was

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making fifty thousand dollars a week,
every dollar was going toward betting on whatever

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he could bet on. It's a
disease. It's an illness, and Pete

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Rose never confronted it until sometime in
the nineteen nineth when he wrote that book,

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and he wrote the book to confess
to it so that he could make

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money off that. One can only
imagine Keith or Brian, what if Pete

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Rose had not done any of that, he would be the most honored baseball

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player in America today. He would
be throwing the first pitch of Opening Day,

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He'd be doing whatever it did.
Can you speak about the impact on

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Pete's family and friends? And you
know he was close with Marty Brenneman,

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he was close with not so close
to Johnny Bench, when he was close

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to Joe Morgan. Can you talk
about the impact his gambling had on his

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family and friends. You know,
it's hurt a lot of people. Bill.

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You know, his close friends have
worried about him over the years,

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worried greatly. And his lies about
about his bets on baseball lives that he

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held on to for fifteen years.
You know, those hurt lots of people.

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And it didn't just hurt baseball.
It didn't just hurt memory of Bargieamanti.

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It hurt his close friends. When
he wrote that book in two thousand

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and four where he finally revealed that
he had been lying all these years,

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even his closest friends didn't know that
he was about to change his story.

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They were caught off guard by the
revelations in that book. And you know,

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in the early nineteen nineties Bill one
man goes to prison protecting Pete Rose,

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it was Tommy Giosa. Tommy was
one of Pete's closest friends in the

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nineteen seventies and eighties. Tommy refuses
to cooperate with Major League Baseball when they

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come knocking in the spring of nineteen
eighty nine, and because he's not going

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to cooperate, because Tommy is not
going to tell Baseball what he knows,

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federal authorities pick him up in April
of that year and he faces a litany

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of charges that, unfortunately for Tommy, he chooses to fight and he ends

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up serving more than two years in
federal prism. So, you know,

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Pete lives hurt a lot of people. And you know you mentioned something before.

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Bill, You know, you know
Pete has deserved, you know,

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all the criticism he's received over the
years for his lives, for his behavior.

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My book doesn't defend that at all. But you're right, you know

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this, this pattern is the behavior
of an addict. And all of us

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probably have had someone in our lives
and our families who has struggled with addictions,

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right, and people who are addicted
struggle to admit the truth. All

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right, we got to run the
name of the book, as Charlie Hussel

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the Wall Street Journal says, it's
the best one written in the subject matter.

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You're going to sign this book?
Where will you be over the weekend

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or whatever? Where will you be
if anywhere? I will be at Joseph

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Beth Books in Rookwood on Tuesday next
week, April second, and I will

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be doing an event with Dell Hi
Historical Society the following night on Wednesday,

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April third. All right, Keith
O'Brien, thank you very much for coming

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on the Bill Cunningham Show, and
good luck with the book. We'll see

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what happens. And once again,
Keith, thank you very much. Thank

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you. Bill. Let's continue with
more the Pete Rose story. It never

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ends, by the way, He's
going to turn eighty three years old in

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July. Eighty three years old four
fourteen forty one. He was born Bill

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Cunningham, News Radio seven hundred WULW. Spring is here and prices are soaring everywhere grocer