My First Cards

This is a great card. Pete Rose, doin’ what Pete does best—puttin’ a little hustle into hittin. As if that wasn’t enough, this card celebrates his ascent to the top of the National League hit list.

As the ’81 season approached, everybody knew Pete was about to own the National League hits record. He only trailed Hammerin’ Hank Aaron by 43, and Stan “The Man” Musial by 73 hits. An intriguing twist to the story, was that in Stan’s final game, he banged out 2 hits while playing Pete’s Reds. Pete out hit him that day 3 hits to 2, and was now about to out hit him for his career too.

The only thing that might slow it down, was the looming possibility of the players strike if things didn’t get worked out in time. So the media began to follow this as a bit of a race against time, to see if he could do it before the strike, which was originally set to go on May 29.

Several days before the strike was to begin though, May 19, in Los Angeles, Pete passed Hank for 2nd place in NL history, with an RBI single off Bob Welch in the 1st inning. Now only Musial was ahead of him.

He was right on track. Before the season, Pete had calculated he’d set the new NL mark during the mid-June series against the Reds. Pete had also been quoted as saying he expect the players and owners to work things out and avoid a strike, so he wasn’t all that concerned….as long as the Phillies kept winning.

The strike date was moved back, to June 11, which helped Pete get a few more hits. Still not enough though, as the strike began with him just one hit away from the record, and 4 days before the Reds series.

So then everybody waited.

…and waited.

…and waited some more, for the strike to end.

Finally, on August 9th, play resumed with the All-Star game. The next day, the Phillies were hosting the Cardinals. In Pete’s first at-bat, he reached on the error. In the 3rd inning, he was thrown out on a hit that went straight back to the pitcher. In the 5th, he grounded out to 2nd.

Things just weren’t lookin’ good, ’til the 8th inning when Pete slapped a leadoff single to leftfield off an inside fastball thrown by Mark Littell. The chase was over.

The game was stopped for a few minutes for a ceremony, that included Stan Musial coming onto the field and telling Pete, “I couldn’t be happier for you”. As if that wasn’t enough, after the game, president Ronald Reagan called to congratulate him too.

After that game, people began to ask if Pete could pass Ty Cobb’s all-time hit record. He’d only need to climb over Hank Aaron again, who had 3,709 total hits (remember he played in the AL at the end of his career), and Ty Cobb’s 4,191 hits. All of a sudden, it seemed like Charlie Hustle might have a real shot at what many thought was one of the unbreakable baseball records….