num_pages: 352
description: Kennedy's book on the tarnished and enigmatic Rose is exceptional. Like the best writing about sport--Liebling Angell--it qualifies as stirring literature. I'd read Kennedy no matter what he writes about. --Richard FordPete Rose played baseball with a singular and headfirst abandon that endeared him to fans and peers even as it riled others--a figure at once magnetic beloved and polarizing. Rose has more base hits than anyone in history yet he is not in the Hall of Fame. Twenty-five years ago he was banished from baseball for gambling then ruled ineligible for Cooperstown; today the question Does Pete Rose belong in the Hall of Fame? has evolved into perhaps the most provocative in sports a layered slippery and ever-relevant moral conundrum.How do we evaluate the Hit King now at a time when steroid cheats appear on the Hall of Fame ballot even as Rose is denied? What do we make of this happily unrepentant gambler this shameless but beguiling showman whose postbaseball journey has led him to a curious reality show and to the streets of Cooperstown to hawk his signature his story himself?Best-selling author Kostya Kennedy delivers an evocative answer in his fascinating re-examination of Pete Rose's life; from his cocky and charismatic early years through his storied playing career to his bitter war against baseball's hierarchy to the man we find today--still incorrigible still adored by many. Where has his improbable saga landed him in the redefined post-steroid world? Do we feel any differently about Pete Rose today? Should we?
language: English
title: Pete Rose: An American Dilemma
publisher: Sports Illustrated