Good morning!
The only time I met Pete Rose was in Clearwater during spring training in the early ’80s. Rose was squatting on a folding chair between the bleachers and clubhouse talking baseball with someone I didn’t recognize. Approaching slowly, I handed him a pen and a National League baseball that was still in the box. He removed the ball from its wrapping, signed it, returned the pen and ball and looked me straight in the eye.

“Thank you,” I said. He nodded and returned to talking baseball.

The 83-year-old Rose died on Monday, fitting the all-time hits leader to pass on the eve of the postseason.

Rose was at third base the night Bernie Carbo’s pinch-hit home run in the eighth inning helped send the 1975 World Series to a seventh game.

Rose and Carbo were Cincinnati teammates until 1972 when Carbo was traded to St. Louis. There are several versions of what they said to each other that night as Carbo was rounding third base, but according “Saving Bernie Carbo” by Carbo and Dr. Peter Hantzis this is how it went down:

“As I was rounding third and yelling at Pete about being so strong, he yelled back, “Isn’t this fun? This is a great World Series!”

Afterward I ran into Pete. He gave me a picture of himself and wrote on it: Bernie, thank you for hitting the home run because it gave me an opportunity in Game 7 to go 2-for-4 and be MVP of the World Series.”

Rose once said he’d run through hell wearing a gasoline suit to play baseball, a statement underscored by Jane Leavy in her 2010 bestseller, “The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood.” Leavy wrote that Mantle gave Rose his famous “Charlie Hustle” nickname the first time he saw him in spring training. “The Mick gave it to me,” Pete bragged that summer. “He and Ford,” he crowed. “Mantle said to me, ‘Hey, Charlie Hustle.’”

Rose broke Ty Cobb’s hits record on Sept. 11, 1985, and retired the following season with 4,256 hits and a career .303 batting average. He continued managing the Reds until early 1989 when MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti banned him for betting on baseball.

“When he signed the document acknowledging his banishment, Pete fully believed he would be on the Hall of Fame ballot,” biographer Keith O’Brien told podcaster Doug Brunt.

O’Brien wrote “Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose and the Last Glory Days of Baseball” and in it he recounts how Giamatti had told the press he’d leave it to them to decide whether Rose belonged in Cooperstown. Shortly afterward Giamatti died of a heart attack and all bets were off, so to speak.

“The qualities that made Pete Rose succeed — playing with a fury and always believing he could outwork someone — are the same qualities that made him fail as a man,” said O’Brien. “Hubris. It is one of the great human flaws.”

Rose’s name has never appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot.

“That is not Major League Baseball’s problem, that is the Hall of Fame’s problem,” said MLB Radio’s Mike Ferrin. “They made the decision. Basically the baseball writers never got a chance to vote on him.

“If you have issues with Pete Rose not being in the Hall of Fame you can take it up with [HOF president] Josh Rawitch. I’ll give you his home phone number.”

“Pete was always willing to help anyone,” wrote Carbo. “No one is perfect, but Pete definitely belongs in the Hall of Fame.”

Congrats to sports editor Jeff Lajoie and wife Mary on the birth of their daughter Ellie Josephine Lajoie. The stork arrived at 1:11 a.m. on Sept. 20, and proud papa sent a photo of Ellie wearing a football onesie. “Ellie survived another Patriots stinker!” he wrote after the 30-13 loss to the Niners.

Kudos to Hatfield’s Fan Gaudette who was inducted into the Western Mass Golf Hall of Fame. “There was a scramble before the dinner, and our team won!,” emailed Fan’s wife Joannie. “The 86-year-old, our son, Sean, and the pro from Wyckoff, Jan Martell, and me. We had a blast and shot 56 at Oak Ridge in Agawam.”

Halloween came early for the UMass football team last week. The Minutemen were 40 seconds away from beating Miami of Ohio, 20-17, as 17-point underdogs before 9,542 fans at Fred C. Yager Stadium. It would’ve been the second-biggest win of the Don Brown era behind last year’s win against Army.

UMass wore down Miami’s defensive front and Taisun Phommachanh and CJ Hester rushed for 143 yards, but the UMass secondary couldn’t cover a tortoise stuck in molasses.

RedHawks quarterback Brett Gabbert turned into Tom Brady by completing five straight passes in 36 seconds to get Miami into field goal position. The 47-yard attempt was good and the RedHawks won in overtime.

The game’s Lucy moment for UMass happened in overtime when a 21-yard touchdown pass from Phommachanh to Jakobie Keeney-James was called back because UMass had an illegal player downfield.

The loss dropped the program to 25-116 in the FBS.

Anthony Simpson is no longer with the UMass football program. Named Connecticut’s offensive high school player of the year in 2019 by the Hartford Courant, Simpson followed Don Brown from Arizona to UMass where he had 57 catches and three touchdowns last season.

This season he was injured, played sparingly and was kicked off the team after last month’s loss to Toledo. According to a reliable source, Simpson was asked to leave because of “anger management issues.”

SQUIBBERS: The Braves got 18 wins out of Chris Sale but the sawdust was flying off the crankshaft so maybe the trade to get Vaughn Grissom wasn’t so bad after all. … The NY Post’s Jon Heyman reports that deposed Boston GM Chaim Bloom might end up in St. Louis. … One way to stop long field goals in the NFL would be to crank the crossbar higher for kicks over 50 yards. … Left-handed hitters usually can’t hit southpaws, but Houston’s Kyle Tucker attributes his high average to his brother who threw Wiffle balls at his head that broke over the plate. … “Gotta go with Milwaukee in the NL playoffs,” writes Shelburne native Skip Smith, a longtime cameraman who was stationed in the Tampa Rays’ dugout. “It’s strictly sentimental because Willie Adames was always friendly to me.” … Turners Falls High School player for all seasons Madi Liimatainen has been offered a softball scholarship to play at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt. … Sideline reporter Scott Mutryn was tasked with interviewing BC coach Bill O’Brien at halftime of Saturday’s game against Western Kentucky. Mutryn mentioned outside containment and O’Brien snapped, “It’s all terrible. Some of the worst [expletive] I’ve seen in a long time.” … Ed McCaffrey told Ross Tucker that his son Christian was married over the summer. “It was an incredible wedding, and then he didn’t even take a honeymoon he went right to training.” The bride, we assume, was a real sport about it. … Mike Francesa on Jets coach Robert Saleh’s sideline demeanor: “They should give him pompoms because all he is is a glorified cheerleader.” … Sports radio’s Maggie Gray on why Andy Reid “messes up” at the end of games: “His blood sugar’s low. How many times does this guy go four hours without eating?”

Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet715@icloud.com