Ty Cobb and Pete Rose - Two Amazing Hitters Having Trouble Fitting In

    No one has done a movie playing Pete Rose, to my knowledge. Maybe someday they will. Would it be the story of addiction to gambling? One of the best to ever play America's game. Apparently nothing so compelling to put on the silver screen, unless I am wrong... He playing and managing, and later explaining his non-guilt/lying about betting on his own team.

    Now gone on age 83. Dead, but imprinted in a million history books and a few million heads and hearts of those left around, thinking about Charlie Hustle, the man who was the best but could not be offered Cooperstown, officially.

    Ty Cobb was a cantankerous racist, a not-nice, codgity (my word?) guy in his hay days, and I guess in his later life, according to reports and a movie about him, that I finally saw this last summer or so, starring Tommy Lee Jones, the former college roomie of Al Gore (our vice president during most of the 1990s, the one who lost Florida, ever-so-barely, in fall of 2000. 

    Ty Cobb. Not a nice guy. But super great hitter and runner of the bases.

    Pete Rose was almost as good. Stayed healthy enough for all those hits, did not bash himself on the basepaths despite his head long hurls-- maybe his burly arms saved him. But his penchant for the gaming and later fessing up could not save him for the moments and accolades that he truly deserved.

    Complicated.

    A simple game, not always played and run by simple men.

    Such is our existence. Simple plans, complicated results. 

    Thanks for all that Cobb and Rose, and those 8,000 plus hits, and a whole lot more.