Student compiling 4,256 reasons to support Pete Rose
Abby Campbell is a mature soul for a 13-year-old.
She’s not into Ugg boots, iPhones, or even Hunger Games movies.
No, this Ashland Middle School seventh-grader has a passion for something else: Pete Rose.
Yes, that Pete Rose — the Hit King who has been banned from baseball for twice as many years as Abby has been alive.
Abby and her teacher at AMS, Larry Bailey, are involved in a monstrous extracurricular project called “4,256 reasons why Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame.”
The number 4,256 is significant because that’s how many hits Rose collected in an amazing major league career that spanned 24 seasons, most of those with the Cincinnati Reds.
The project has the endorsement of Rose, who sent Abby an autographed photo and his best wishes for what they were trying to do. She wrote the Hit King a letter, explaining what she and her teacher were doing and he responded enthusiastically.
Since October they have collected more than 2,000 of the reasons, scouring the Internet for everything they can find with Rose’s name attached to it. Abby comes to school an hour early five days a week to do the research.
Bailey, a baseball collector and longtime fan of Rose, has interviewed more than 50 former players to get some of the reasons from them.
Once all the information is collected, they plan to put it in book form, Bailey said. Proceeds will go toward the purchase of baseball gear for Little Leagues in the Ashland area.
The goal is to be finished by April, he said.
Abby began the project because of an English assignment where Bailey asked the class to write a personal narrative. He wanted the students to learn research skills, along with learning more about the person they were writing about.
“I wanted to do a basketball player or a baseball player,” Abby said. “He (Bailey) said, ‘Pete Rose. We’ll have to look up information on him.”’
It was like turning Nolan Ryan loose on a Little League team. She dove into the research and started with her father, Bryan Campbell, who is also a fan of Rose and believes he belongs in the Hall of Fame. The two of them often watch Reds’ games together.
Everything that Abby has learned about Rose isn’t great. She knows he bet on baseball and found out he served jail time for tax evasion. But she also knows that he is one of the best baseball players in history and has more hits than anybody who ever played.
“Everybody deserves a second chance,” she said. “We get second chances at school all the time.”
Her research methods are what you’d expect, and it has been a no-stone-unturned process.
“I type in Pete Rose on Google,” she said. “But we’re not only looking at his stats but everything else. We’re writing letters to former teammates asking them for reasons.”
Campbell is organized in the project. She and a friend, Destiny Edens, work together with their teacher.
“I was amazed, No. 1, that she was interested in it,” Bailey said. “I grew up with him, she didn’t. I was skeptical. I thought when we started, ‘We’ll see how long this lasts.’ But she’s been unreal. If I’m not in my room (an hour early before school), she comes looking for me.”
Abby has the research on a thumb drive and they In this photo taken Jan. 23, Abby Campbell, 13, who has enjoyed learning about baseball hit king Pete Rose for a school project with Ashland Middle School teacher Larry Bailey, poses for a photo in Ashland, Ky. She holds a letter sent to her by Pete Rose. also have a three-inch thick folder of hard copies. The reasons — 4,256 of them — are coming one by one.
Bailey said he saw Rose at a baseball card show in Cincinnati in November and told him about the project.
“He said, ‘Let me shake your hand! That’s great. Go for it!”’ Bailey said of Rose’s response.
Abby is also a cheerleader for AMS and she was at a national competition on the day the letter and an autographed photo of Rose came in the mail with her name on it. Bailey shared it with his student the following Monday.
“I came in on that Monday and Mr. Bailey said ‘I have some good news.’ I was so in shock,” she said. “I couldn’t talk.”
The autographed photo is of Rose diving head-first wearing his Phillies uniform. It also has the United States Air Force logo on it and is black-and-white.
“I’ve never seen one like it and I’ve seen almost everything,” Bailey said.
Meanwhile, the research marches on toward reason 4,256.
Abby said they’ve already chosen the final answer.
“The last one is 4,256 hits and zero steroids,” she said.