On Deck For The Big Knock

"I want nice things at the ball park," Rose says. "Who wants to come to the park if you can't stand it there?"

FOUR P.M.—HOLY WEDLOCK

For the MacNeil-Lehrer interview, Rose is wearing a fire-red PETE ROSE: HUSTLING FOR THE RECORD T shirt. Rose doesn't catch much MacNeil-Lehrer, but he knows businessmen do, so he wears the shirt. Never know who might want a piece of the action. Rose never took Accounting 101, but he carries a mean calculator in his head. "I'd have made a damn good promotions guy," he says.

For the Cobb chase, you can buy T shirts, key chains, hats, posters, original Rose/Cobb lithographs, limited edition silver ($20) and gold ($1,000) coins, and, coming soon, Pete Rose's diary of the chase, written by Hal Bodley, a sportswriter whose best man was Rose. All of the projects are approved by Rose, some started by him. Why should he apologize? Money makes him feel young. Rose likes to feel young.

Rose has sometimes been called a baseball mercenary, which is balderdash. When he signed with the Reds, his salary was pruned to less than $250,000 per year, a cut so fat that it had to be approved by the Players' Association. With attendance incentives, he will probably make at least $500,000 in '85.

Not that Rose won't turn another dollar now and then. He has plugged Aqua Velva, Jockey, Geritol, Wheaties, Swanson's TV dinners, Gekimen noodles, Zenith, Mountain Dew and even his own soda pop, a chocolate-flavored concoction called Pete. Like Rose, it had lots of fizz. He is also a chief spokesman for Mizuno sporting goods, a deal that earns him about $100,000 per year.

All that money makes Rose attractive, not just to three-piece suiters, but to two-piece bikiniers, which gives him a reputation as a ladies' man, which is not exactly true, either. "Not a lot of ladies," he says. "It was always just one at a time."

Well, that's not exactly true, either. His first wife, Karolyn, filed for divorce in 1979 because, she says, he was seeing Carol Woilung in public. Carol, 5'7" and dripping blonde, was tending bar at a place called Sleep Out Louie's, only a stand-up double from the stadium. "The clubhouse man said, 'If you want to see the prettiest butt in Cincinnati, go to Sleep Out Louie's,' " Rose told Cincinnati magazine. "I had to take him up on it." Says Carol, "I had no idea who this guy was when he walked in. He'd come in and we'd just talk. He found out I wasn't easy like all the other girls. We'd talk about things. He was funny. And such a gentleman. He made me happy." Says Rose, "She made me feel young.... I like to live like that. Fast cars, fast horses, a young wife. That keeps you young."

Women grow fond of Rose and seem especially unwilling to give him up. Karolyn once ripped a diamond necklace off Carol at Riverfront Stadium. She was still married to Pete at the time. Twice, Karolyn tattooed Carol's face. "Split my lip," she says. This is life in the big leagues.

Rose was not amused about the way the divorce was handled in the papers. "You'd think I was the only guy in America to ever get a divorce," he says. Still, Rose is not likely to follow Alan Alda onto the cover of Ms. magazine. For instance, when Rose became a manager, he was asked if he could handle his players' personal problems. No sweat, he said, especially if it involved the marital sacrament. "Hey, just give her a million and tell her to hit the road," he was quoted as saying. Says Karolyn, "I don't think women mean anything to Pete." This is not exactly true. Baseball just means more.