When the hustle finally ends

​Last night, I heard the news that Pete Rose died. The news immediately took me back to my youth.

I remember sitting on the front porch of an old farm house. My great-grandparents' farm house. My great-grandfather sitting in a chair smoking a pipe. My great-grandmother sitting in an old porch swing, rocking gently while holding a transistor radio, the voice of Marty Brennaman filling the air calling each pitch and swing of the bat of that night's Cincinnati Reds game.

Maybe my great grandparents never looked younger and more full of life than when Pete Rose - Charlie Hustle they called him - stretched a single into an unthinkable double or dove headfirst into third, stealing a base no one else would dream of stealing. Brennaman's voice making it feel like it was happening right there in the barn yard.

I thought of a middle school basketball game. A loose ball headed out of bounds. I hustled to the edge of the small gym diving for it. The sound of wreckage filled the air as volleyball equipment tumbled everywhere when I landed where it was being stored.

I didn't make the save, but I felt like Pete Rose, full of life.

Charlie Hustle.

Charlie Hustle acquired some other nicknames after his playing days. Many of them related to his gambling problem and being disowned from baseball for making wagers on teams he managed.

He threw it all away, many would say.

I never said that. I suppose because just as much as I could related to Charlie Hustle diving headfirst into an opposing catcher, I could equally relate to his struggles.

His failures.

I get that many people can't understand how someone could bet on their own team. But I do. I get how people can't understand how someone can cheat and steal to support destructive habits. But I do. Intimately. I get how people can think self-destructing is avoided by simply shifting the direction of one's choices. But I know that beneath self-destruction is often torture and self-loathing.

It's not an excuse even if painful truth often sounds like an excuse.

I get that really good people, even really good people with Hall of Fame credentials, can go through life with the same inner frailties as everyone else. They simply don't get the grace others sometimes get because somehow being one of the greatest baseball players ever should protect one from frailties?

This morning, I'd like to imagine Pete sitting next to my great-grandmother in a porch swing. They are listening to the baseball playoffs on a transistor radio, reminiscing about the good old days of the Big Red Machine when the Reds and the playoffs frequently went hand in hand. My great-grandfather taking it in across the way as smoke gently fills the space between them.

I know my great-grandparents would embrace the moment, but I don't wish this scene so much for them as for Pete Rose.

I wish it for Charlie Hustle, someone who shaped a piece of my youth, someone I've found myself relating to in many ways well beyond my youth.

I think it's probably been a long time since Pete Rose felt the kind of life he felt sliding into third base, rising and dusting the dirt off to the roar of an adoring crowd, a crowd getting more and more of their on hustle on with each stolen base and hit over his career.

I'd like to think he is feeling a joy and freedom this morning, the peace found in a gently swaying porch swing, a swing that doesn't care whether one is in the hall of fame or not, that doesn't care to know the depths of one's mistakes, a peace found simply in returning home to a place you've been hustling your whole life to get to.

No need to hustle any more Pete.

Oh, the freedom sweet freedom of that.

Rest easy old friend. And thank you for all of it, the records and frailties alike.