Collision at Home Plate: The Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti

by James Reston Jr.

Collision at Home Plate is a dual biography of Pete Rose, an uncouth but great ballplayer who suffered disgrace and imprisonment, and Bart Giamatti, the baseball commissioner so deeply shaken and bruised by the Rose scandal that he died a week after it was made public. This is the definitive book on one of the most traumatic and tragic episodes in baseball history.

Genres: Sports, Baseball, Nonfiction

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

James Reston Jr. was an American journalist, documentarian and author of political and historical fiction and non-fiction. He wrote about the Vietnam war, the Jonestown Massacre, civil rights, the impeachment of Richard Nixon, and the September 11 attacks.

Reviews

[Mary Ronan Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are those who say Pete Rose killed Bart Giamatti. That's putting it strongly, but it seems inescapable that with Giamatti's romantic and idealistic view of the game and Pete Rose's earthy hustle and his gambling problems, which eventually seeped into his professional life, the two men were bound to clash. Both suffered.

It's been a while since I read Collision at Home Plate and I wish now I had written down some comments about it at the time. There is a lot of detail in this joint biography of two extraordinary people whose lives and values differed so dramatically in the late 1980s when Bart Giamatti as commissioner banned Pete Rose from baseball for betting on the game. The investigation, the ensuing legal hearing and challenges, and the necessity as Giamatti saw it of chastising this superb player, foiling his hopes of being in the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2004 Pete Rose admitted he had bet on the Reds when he was playing and managing the team, but insists he never bet against them.

Betting on baseball and throwing games to benefit the gamblers is baseball's original sin. The Black Sox scandal of 1919, handled by the first baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banned seven players from the game and strengthened rules against any betting whatever by players. Giamatti was sensitive to this episode and saw his role as commissioner as the keeper of baseball ethics. He was deeply disturbed by the Pete Rose episode and died of a heart attack only a few days after the end of the dispute.

[Bruce McClure · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been plodding away at this book. To say that the author has loaded it with information on both subjects would be an understatement. The book is a fascinating look at the pathway each man (Giamatti and Rose) took on their way to the ultimate "collision". It's an excellent profile of two persons striving to be outstanding in their field (no pun intended). It shows how talented players who were friends of Rose melted into other professions, lacking the single-minded drive that he had.

However, the book tends to read like a textbook at times. There is no real "tickle your funny bone" humor in it. It's simply a straightforward account. I am, however, happy I've read this book after reading Keith O'Brien's Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball as it does fill in some gaps, not to mention it brings to life the history of Bart Giamatti (much of which overlaps my own New England upbringing).

Abruptly, the book ends with about half a page discussing Giamatti's death. It feels like a screeching halt to a tale that had more twists and turns than any highway in America. The Epilogue is brief and touches on Rose's tax conviction and Giamatti's memory. Finally, the book takes up the idea of Rose's inclusion in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. I find the author's idea of how to include Rose to be a rather good idea.

Dedicated readers will get through this book, but it's my opinion that the average baseball fan looking for salacious details alone will give up and put this one down quickly. If one does that, they'll miss out on detail that wasn't necessarily public at the time of the scandal. One would learn a lot from this book.

[Tom Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in 2024 and the events surrounding Pete Rose's gambling on baseball seem even more relevant and newsworthy today than they were in 1989. Online gambling is everywhere and Major League Baseball even allows advertising for this activity inside the ballparks and on the television. Adding to the conundrum for baseball is the fact that the best player in the game at present, Shohei Ohtani, has become involved in a gambling situation with regards to his friend and interpreter. I think that Rose clearly broke one of the cardinal rules in baseball at the time when he bet on baseball, especially his own team. Bart Giamatti's words after Rose was banned from the game in 1989 have likely prevented him from ever being reinstated. While Rose is not a sympathetic figure, he was one of the best players of all time. In the decades since his banishment, many wonder whether he should be inducted into the Hall of Fame due to his records. I don't have that answer but I do believe that people should play by the rules and pay the consequences if they choose to break them. If you are a baseball fan like myself, I encourage you to read this book and make your own decision. This was a fascinating story of two very unique individuals and how their lives crossed and the impact that it had on the game of baseball.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a reason all sports want to separate themselves from the gambling world -- there's a seedy underbelly to it that undermines the integrity of anything it touches. This book really showed the type of people Pete Rose associated with. It also showed the stress Bart Giamati and MLB was put under because of it. Still, the agreement of August 1989 was a "settlement" - Pete would be suspended from baseball, and after a few years he could be reinstated. Who knew Bart Giamati would do only a few days later...

[Larry Lutz · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a baseball fan - of the game - and an admitted biased anti-Rose fan at that , I found the details and proedural nature of the book only mildly compelling. What did make the book worth a read are the revelations of personality and the nature of Rose and Giamatti's upbringing, and childhood and early career achievements. There was little early on to suggest a collision and yet that's exactly what happened.
Given that the outcome of events was well known, it was satisfying to read how those events unfolded. The author, thankfully, didn't try to inject an artificial sense of drama.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

In which the author describes two very different men and the shattering collision of their destinies.

The character portraits are deep and vivid. There's a ton of detail about the gambling allegations.

A pretty fun read.

[Rusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good for hard facts. Nothing mroe than that, though.