Rose pulls for Bud in Alzheimer’s fight
Charlie Hustle says he is “pulling” for his old baseball brawling partner, Bud Harrelson, as the former Mets shortstop and manager battles Alzheimer’s disease.
“Goddamn it’s tough to get old,” baseball’s hit king, Pete Rose, told the Daily News Tuesday after he read recent reports about Harrelson’s plight. “I know they took Buddy’s driver’s license away from him. I’m pulling for him.”
Forty-five years ago this October, Rose and Harrelson engaged in one of the most famous — and lopsided — fisticuffs in baseball history, after Rose barreled into Harrelson at second base during Game 3 of the NLCS between Cincinnati and the Mets at Shea Stadium. Rose was forever hated in Flushing after he tried, unsuccessfully, to break up that double play, but the Mets would have the last laugh in ’73, winning Game 3 and eventually the pennant to advance to the World Series against Oakland. Reggie Jackson’s A’s eventually won that Fall Classic in seven games.
But all these years later, the NLCS brawl still stands out from that postseason, even though Rose says that there wouldn’t have been any “donnybrook” had Mets third baseman Wayne Garrett not scampered over from third base.
“I slid into Bud. I tell you who started that whole donnybrook was Wayne Garrett. He come running in from third and just started the whole goddamn fight. I’ve never said anything negative about Bud on that play. That was just two aggressive players playing for the right to go to the World Series,” says Rose. “You know how many times I slid into second base and knocked the second baseman over? If you’re in a playoff, or a World Series or All-Star Game, it’s a bigger deal.”
The 76-year-old Rose outweighed Harrelson by about 30 pounds during their playing days, but that didn’t stop Harrelson from mouthing off to Rose after Charlie Hustle took Harrelson out on the play.
“For a little guy, (Harrelson) was real aggressive, which is what you need when you don’t have the stature of some of these guys. You’ve got to make up for it in other areas, and Bud did,” says Rose. “Buddy wasn’t a fighter. In those days, you wore sunglasses underneath the bill of the cap. I must have hit the sunglasses into the bridge of (Harrelson’s) nose. He wiped his brow with his hand. He had blood on his hand. His instinctive thing to say was, ‘You c---s---er!’ I said, ‘Bud, you don’t know me that well.’ Willie (Mays) had to go out to left field because fans were throwing so much garbage at me. I had a Jack Daniels bottle thrown at me from the third deck at Shea Stadium. It was just like New York fans though — it was empty before they threw it. They didn’t leave nothing for the player.”
Rose says that “probably by the next day,” Game 4, the tensions had simmered between him and Harrelson, now 73, and that the two men went on to become friends and even played together on the Phillies in 1979.
When they were Phillies teammates, Rose says on one occasion he was taking batting practice indoors underneath Veterans Stadium while his son, Pete Jr., and Harrelson’s son, Tim, were engaged in a fierce game of Pickle.
But that Rose vs. Harrelson competition ended the same way as the ’73 wrestling match.
“They got into a fight and my son beat Bud’s kid’s ass,” says Rose.
“So we’re 2-for-2 with the Harrelson family. I told Bud that and he laughed his ass off.”