The Pete Rose Column

Baseball legend Pete Rose passed away earlier this week, and Shank has a ton of small stories to tell about him:

Pete Rose was crude and rough around the edges, but his love for baseball was evident every game

Pete Rose, who died Monday in Nevada at the age of 83, loved baseball and compiled more major league hits (4,256) than anyone else who ever played. Unfortunately, his apparent addiction to gambling blew up his career and kept him out of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Rose was crude. Rough around the edges. And he noticed everything.

“I remember in 1982 when I first did the ‘Game of the Week,’ ” Bob Costas said Monday night. “I was set up on the field before the game and Pete was playing catch down the third base line and he looked at me and said, ‘I’ve seen you. You do those Big Ten football games.’ And I’m thinking, ‘Why would Pete Rose know me?’

“Years later, I figured it out. It wasn’t like he was following my career. It was the betting. He bet on everything.”

Definitely worth a read.

Starting Time

The 2024 New England Patriots are 1 - 3 at this point of the season. Shank wants to throw caution to the wind:

We have seen enough: Drake Maye should take over as the Patriots’ quarterback. Now.

MayeDay! MayeDay!

The SS Kraft is taking on water. The good ship and crew are in peril and the gales of October may come early.

Serious football scholars insist we’re not supposed to talk about playing Drake Maye over Jacoby Brissett because the rookie quarterback would be permanently damaged if he were thrust into the starting role Sunday against Miami at Gillette Stadium. The No. 3 pick in the 2024 draft needs to learn by watching and it’s too much to ask him to start his NFL career behind the Swiss Cheese Five, a.k.a the Patriots’ offensive line.

We don’t care. We have seen enough. And it just keeps getting worse.

Remember Steve Martin playing Neal Page in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”? After many hours enduring John Candy’s Del Griffith character (the boring shower curtain ring salesman), Neal finally explodes and says, “I could tolerate any insurance seminar! For days, I could sit there and listen to them go on and on with a big smile on my face. They’d say, ‘How can you stand it?’ I’d say, ‘Cuz I’ve been with Del Griffith. I can take anything.’