Should you bet on Charlie Hustle and the Matter of Pete Rose?
the true crime that's worth your time
The crime
The literal, actionable crime for which Pete Rose did half a year in a federal penitentiary is tax evasion, although related allegations involved narcotics trafficking, and un-related allegations include sexual assault.
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But it's the figurative crime, betting on baseball while playing and managing the Cincinnati Reds, that casts a far longer and colder shadow.
The story
I have spent a fair number of working hours contemplating Pete Rose's situation, presenting it at baseball conferences, and debating it over pints. We can get into the pros and cons of gerrymandering him into the Hall of Fame somehow in the comments, if you like, but the question before the court today, so to speak, is the pros and cons of Max's four-part docuseries, Charlie Hu$tle and the Matter of Pete Rose, which dropped last week. Is it true crime worth your time?
Well, it's not true crime, strictly speaking, although Rose is a convicted felon and did get implicated in some pretty grimy shit back in the eighties – so if you don't like baseball or don't have a particular fondness for stories about this era of baseball, Charlie Hustle (...I'll do the dollar-sign styling once, guys) isn't for you. I love baseball, and said great love affair began at almost the exact time Rose broke Ty Cobb's all-time hits record, so I have a Proustian relationship with MLB "plots" from 1985-6.
But if your response to the names "Rose" and "Cobb" is "[blank stare]...ohhh, right, sure"? Charlie Hustle isn't for the baseball-uninitiated, the way of most 30 For 30s that kind of teach the audience about the sport in question are. (If you'd like to get jumped in, try Buzz Bissinger's 2001 rundown for Vanity Fair of the case as it stood then.) Not that director Mark Monroe (a producer on, among other things, Love, Lizzo and the Harry/Meghan thing on Netflix) isn't per se competent; the build is great, it's visually compelling, and Monroe is not afraid to ask Rose a question in a talking-head, listen to the falsehood Rose asserts, then cut in contradictory receipts immediately afterward. It's evident Monroe is really enjoying telling the story and is as invested in how it turns out as the viewer, and that's always a positive.
But I may have gotten just much out of what the series didn't address, and what or whom it didn't include, and if you don't have a background in baseball or The Whole Pete Rose Thing, the omissions may not tell you as much. The former teammates who sat for interviews (Mike Schmidt), the former teammates who merited a chyron about their declining to do so (Johnny Bench), the former teammates/contemporaries who will consent to appear on camera in passing (Reggie Jackson) but don't do THes; that former intimate and scapegoat Tommy Gioiosa only shows up in a 2012 series of filmed sitdowns…as Daniel Fienberg notes in his THR review of Charlie Hustle, it's not a stretch to figure out why certain big names didn't want to stick their hands in this ethical beehive.
But not knowing which big names does remove a layer of depth. Ditto the lack of attention paid to his personal life, beyond interviews with Pete Rose Jr. and the whole semi-adopting-Gioiosa "storyline." Lord knows I didn't want to revisit his reality show from a dozen years ago; Monroe is likely wise to let a couple of references to the end of Rose's first marriage speak for the tawdry whole. But I do know who isn't on-camera; viewers who don't have the context will get less out of the series.
("What's the context for Chad Lowe?" Well, he was a big fan as a kid, and is in recovery now. He's got good things to say, don't get me wrong; it's just a rando choice, especially if he took a spot Sarah Langs or Doug Glanville could have filled.)
Charlie Hustle does a great job framing the idea that keeping Pete Rose out of the Hall of Fame allows MLB and the baseball-commentary industrial complex to use him as a lightning rod of sorts. Because the "matter" of the doc's subtitle still isn't really resolved, all the other matters Rose's case distracts from – steroid users on the ballot; the Astros sign-stealing scandal; the many known scumbags already in Cooperstown; the legal-sportsbook kudzu climbing every surface in today's game – can be used as comps or points on a continuum of grotty behavior, instead of faced and handled.
It also does a great job underlining the idea that Rose is difficult to stick up for, and uninterested in following the very clear signposts that those doing so carefully put up for him. He's a liar. He's a sexist, at best (the footage from the aftermath of the "it was 55 years ago, babe" imbroglio is painful). He's a tacky narcissistic blowhard. But, like a lot of gasbags of that ilk, he's also got a dark charisma, a watchable magnetism – nobody committed harder to the worst of seventies style than that guy – that, for fans of the game, makes the hustle that made Rose and then unmade him endlessly diverting.
It's not essential viewing, either as true crime or for non-fans of baseball, but if your ballclub greeted the trade deadline with a depressing sell-off, a few hours with Charlie Hustle is well spent.