While his famous father remains a Major League Baseball outlaw, Pete Rose Jr. has become a minor league manager. The Chicago White Sox announced on Monday that Rose, 40, will manage their advanced rookie affiliate at Bristol (Va.) in the Appalachian League.
How's that for irony? The son (on the right) is employable but not the father. {YSP :MORE}
MLB, of course, shackled Rose Sr. to the ineligible list back in 1989 after he — while manager of the Cincinnati Reds — was discovered to have bet on his team's games (and everything else that has a line).
He famously denied the charges, repeatedly, before coming clean (in his own way) in 2004. The majors' all-time hits leader remains in exile (with the occasional weekend furlough) hoping someday to be reinstated and made eligible for the Hall of Fame.
Many baseball fans remember Rose Jr. as a kid; he was a bat boy when his dad broke Ty Cobb's hits record in 1985.
He got a cup of coffee in the majors as a player, going 2 for 14 with the Reds in 1997, but ended a mostly minor league playing career in 2009. Rose Jr. seemed to be generally well-liked and respected, though in 2005 he was convicted for distributing GBL (which can be used as a steroid alternative) to teammates. The White Sox probably assume those days are behind him.
This past season, Rose Jr. got a job as a hitting coach with a team in the Frontier League. That's his only coaching experience, but he obviously knows the right people: Buddy Bell, one of his father's former teammates, is Chicago's director of player development and Rose's boss.
Call it a hunch bet, but it's a good thing that Bell is giving Rose a chance to manage.
Yet, how strange would it be, say, 10 years from now, if Rose. Jr. is managing in the majors and his father remains banned from the sport?
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