The first time I met Pete Rose in person, I made sure to arrive 15 minutes early. It was the fall of 2021, and I was in the early stages of writing a book about the baseball legend and controversial American figure. Rose had been granting me interviews on the phone for more than a month, and had invited me to meet him in Las Vegas for three days of meetings.
Anyone who knows anything about Rose is aware that hustle is central to his success and mythology. Rose and I had talked a lot about that mythology on the phone: his working-class roots in Cincinnati, his ordinary talents as an athlete growing up, how he probably never should have made it to the major leagues, much less become baseball’s all-time hits leader, and how he knew, at a young age, that to survive he had to outwork everyone. He had to become his alter ego, Charlie Hustle, an ethos that would propel him to stardom.
