Charlie Hustle

The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball

De: Keith O'Brien

Narrado por: Ellen Adair, Keith O'Brien

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A captivating chronicle of the incredible story of one of America’s most iconic, charismatic, and still polarizing figures—baseball immortal Pete Rose—and an exquisite cultural history of baseball and America in the second half of the twentieth century • "Comprehensive, compulsively readable and wholly terrific."—The Wall Street Journal

"Long before the inquiry into Ohtani's ties to betting, there was Pete Rose....Charlie Hustle chronicles one of the most polarizing figures in sports."—NPR, All Things Considered

“Baseball biography at its best. With Charlie Hustle, Pete Rose finally gets the book he deserves, and baseball fans get the book we’ve been craving, a hard-hitting, beautifully-written tale that will stand for years to come as the definitive account of one of the most fascinating figures in American sports history.”—Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author of King: A Life

Pete Rose is a legend. A baseball god. He compiled more hits than anyone in the history of baseball, a record he set decades ago that still stands today. He was a working-class white guy from Cincinnati who made it; less talented than tough, and rough around the edges. He was everything that America wanted and needed him to be, the American dream personified, until he wasn’t.

In the 1980s, Pete Rose came to be at the center of one of the biggest scandals in baseball history. He kept secrets, ran with bookies, took on massive gambling debts, and he was magnificently, publicly cast out for betting on baseball and lying about it. The revelations that followed ruined him, changed life in Cincinnati, and forever altered the game.

Charlie Hustle tells the full story of one of America’s most epic tragedies—the rise and fall of Pete Rose. Drawing on firsthand interviews with Rose himself and with his associates, as well as on investigators' reports, FBI and court records, archives, a mountain of press coverage, Keith O’Brien chronicles how Rose fell so far from being America’s “great white hope.” It is Pete Rose as we've never seen him before.

This is no ordinary sport biography, but cultural history at its finest. What O’Brien shows is that while Pete Rose didn’t change, America and baseball did. This is the story of that change.

©2024 Keith O'Brien (P)2024 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post

"O'Brien's narrative gain[s] impressive authority from the depth of [its] research. . . . A thorough account of one of the most fascinating rags-to-riches-to-infamy sagas of twentieth-century celebrityhood at a time when baseball was central to America's story writ large."—The New Yorker

“Vivid. . . . Charlie Hustle gets better and better as it builds to Rose’s ultimate downfall. . . . O’Brien ends his fantastic book in grand walk-off fashion, painting a brilliant, harrowing picture of Rose today.”—The Washington Post

“O’Brien has crafted a sort of American tragedy . . . . [He] deftly builds suspense and narrative friction.”—The New York Times

Sad life

I truly idolized Pete as a player when I was growing up.

I was a freshman in college when he was banished from baseball.

I wish he would have had a relationship with God.

Same facts excellent context

Really enjoyed this book. I wouldn’t say I learned anything new about Pete but definitely well framed in a way that contexualized all the actions in an engrossing way.

Mr hitman ain't perfect

A great book, well researched, written and narrated. A compelling story of one of the best baseball hitters to date.

SOLID STORY OF HUSTLE, WINNING, AND A SAD ENDING NOT QUITE OVER!

As a lifelong fan of Pete Rose, I relived many of his triumphs, and many of his poor choices and failures. I come away with my mixture of feelings towards Pete - memories of admiration, anger, disgust, and - finally - pity and sadness.

Charlie Hustle, later known as the Hit King, had MLB itself as his biggest fan, and he lost that. Sadly, MLB and Baseball's Hall of Fame show little compassion today, and I don't see any change of heart for an increasingly frail old man who will turn 83 on 14 April.

Neither MLB or Cooperstown should waste time patting themselves on their collective backs over the nearly 34 years since that fateful year of 1989 - They have little to be proud of in several instances during their perspective Histories.

Rose will likely die outside the game he glorified with his hits, heart, and hustle - the game he still loves, sells, countless times, while setting many Major League and National League records along the way.

Charlie Hustle gambled away his game, and the Old Man now is all but out of time and forgiveness. That, to me, is particularly quite sad.

Well-written, and very fair. Good narration, too - A Solid Hit!

GRADE: A

His ego that couldn’t allow him to apologize.

The reader was very good. It was a good choice to have a woman read.

OK, But I Don't Understand All the Fuss ...

I remember getting Pete Rose's "rookie of the year" baseball card when I was about 7 years old and living in Ohio. I followed Pete's career and was a fan. His playing accomplishments have "Hall of Fame" written all over them.

As such, and because it was positively reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, I bought this book, It is OK, but there really is nothing new here. Maybe the lapse of time since anything much was written about Pete, his gambling, and lifetime ban made this book seem fresh to some. Not to me. If I could give it three and a half stars, I would. It is competently written, but all of the source material was already mostly there. Pretty easy work.

Personally, I think a better angle would be one that is just discussed around the edges, which is the irony of Pete being banned for gambling, and for life, when all baseball and other sports do now is embrace all of the gambling sites and apps. If baseball believes gambling is a cardinal sin, then at least walk the walk and stay away from it. Yes, Pete broke the rules and lied about it, but maybe enough is finally enough, especially since FanDuel is the "Official Sports Betting Partner" of MLB.

A couple of additional nits. First, the author claims this book is well-sourced, and it appears to be. But he still repeatedly purports to know what people were thinking at various points in time. I don't know how you source someone's thoughts. Second, I thought the narrator did a good job, but the choice of a woman to narrate this book just seems a bit of an odd fit. Maybe that's old-fashioned, but it's how I see it.

Narrator not appropriate

A good story that brought up Parts of Pete Rose’s fascinating and self- destructive life. However, having this female narrator doing this book would be like Howard Cosell doing an Ice Dancing book. Too much empathetic voice inflections.

The truth about Pete Rose

Pete was so addicted to betting not just baseball but anything he could place a bet. What a waste.

Good overview

I have a feeling this makes a better reading book than an audiobook. The narrator has a nice voice and pace, but the book still kinda lost some credibility with the narrator choice. Early on in the book the pronunciation of Jack Nicklaus just kinda lost a bunch of the sports cred for the narrator and from there the book just needed a different voice to tell the story. The book itself gave an interesting overview of the Pete story, but it did tend to gloss over some fairly big subjects.

put Pete in hall of fame

if you love Pete rose listen to this book. the best 14 hrs of my life lol.