Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose’ on Max, a New Docuseries Looking at the Rise and Fall of Major League Baseball’s All-Time Hits Leader

No one in the history of Major League Baseball has ever collected more hits than Pete Rose. Arguably no one in the sport’s history has had as dramatic a fall from grace as Rose either; he famously accepted a lifetime ban from the game in 1989 under a cloud of suspicion regarding his gambling. Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose , a new four-part documentary miniseries on MAX , takes a look at the long career and sad fall of MLB’s all-time hit leader.

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Opening Shot: A black screen, with a quote from early-20th-century sports columnist Ring Lardner: “The only real happiness a ballplayer has is when he is playing a ball game and accomplishes something he didn’t think he could do.” We then cut to wintry shots of the Cincinnati waterfront, and a crowd of Cincinnatians cheering on the Bengals in their 2022 run to the Super Bowl behind quarterback Joe Burrow. Finally, we jump to Pete Rose, comparing the city’s love for Burrow to the love they had for him. Rose professes a fondness for the Bengals… and then admits that he bet on their opponent, the Los Angeles Rams.

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The Gist: Right off the bat in the first episode, we come face-to-face with Rose, who participates fully, giving lengthy interviews about his life. This is interspersed with interviews from a number of prominent figures in the sports world–sportscasters like Al Michaels and Lesley Visser, former teammates like Tommy Helms, and others. They’re here to tell Rose’s story, but also to examine why he did what he did, and to try to tell if he truly is sorry.

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What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There’s no shortage of complicated sports figures who’ve gotten the documentary treatment. McEnroe on Showtime profiled the volatile tennis player; Netflix’s UNTOLD: Johnny Football brought us a look at Johnny Manziel’s meteoric rise and rapid fall. Still, there’s no one with quite the mixture of accomplishment and disgrace as Pete Rose.

Our Take: I want to get two things out of the way here, right off the bat: I am not a fan of Pete Rose, and I am inherently skeptical of sports documentaries that put their title subjects front and center.

The first point stems from Rose’s history: despite credible accusations that he gambled on baseball while active as a player and manager, Rose spent decades playing the victim, steadfastly denying any wrongdoing and lobbying for his reinstatement to the game and induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. At the same time, he did little to dispel the notion that he was associated with sports gambling; the one time I’ve seen Rose in person, he was hawking autographs inside a Las Vegas casino. The second point comes from experience: I’ve watched a lot of sports documentaries, and the ones that happen with the cooperation of the subjects often earn that cooperation by doing their bidding, working to burnish or rehabilitate their image.

With that in mind, a documentary on Pete Rose featuring Pete Rose is something I come to warily. HBO/Max, in my experience, generally does a very good job with their sports documentaries–better than many other streaming outlets–but I have little interest in watching any sort of apologia for Rose.

Thankfully, Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose walks a careful tightrope. It’s willing to let Rose tell his own side of the story–and it’s a revealing side, one of both admirable drive and willful obliviousness–but it doesn’t allow that side to be the whole story. Many of Rose’s on-camera statements are immediately responded to, whether directly or implicitly–for instance, Rose’s insistence that his famous collision with Cleveland catcher Ray Fosse in the 1970 All-Star Game was justified and had no impact on Fosse’s career. (As others quickly note, it was an exhibition game, and Fosse suffered lingering physical impacts for the rest of his career.)

One notable omission–amid the many voices from Rose’s career that show up in the documentary–is that of fellow Reds star Johnny Bench, who we’re informed via an onscreen title card declined to participate. Bench has been a vocal opponent of Rose’s reinstatement for years, noting that Rose knowingly broke the rules, and we see him saying as much in an archival clip. Rose brushes this off as jealousy, claiming bitterly that Bench resented his own popularity with Reds fans. Again, it’s revealing–even as he purports to be turning over a new leaf, finally admitting that he did, in fact, bet on baseball, Rose is fueled by the conflicts of his past.

“I think Pete really believed that he didn’t do anything wrong for a long, long time,” longtime sportscaster Al Michaels speculates. “And then it just kind of became kind of a mess… through the years. He was in denial. I don’t know that he’s all the way back… obviously you have to have Pete tell his own story. But I would listen carefully–you have to sometimes listen between the lines. Is it the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help him God? I don’t know. Maybe in his mind he thinks that is the case.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: The story pivots from his career successes to the moment that most defines him: his ban from baseball for involvement with gambling. Even as Rose has now admitted to betting on baseball, he deflects, denies and shows defiance: “‘Til this day, I don’t think they had evidence that would’ve lasted in court about me betting on baseball. I didn’t keep no records.” (We’re quickly shown that the investigators had betting slips with his fingerprints on them.) “Whaddya want, you wanna cut my balls off? Enough is enough. All I did is bet on baseball. I didn’t rob banks, I didn’t go around knocking up girls… to be honest with you, I guess I’m tellin’ you the truth when I tell you, the only bad quality I had was I bet on baseball.”

Sleeper Star: There’s a lot of voices beyond just Rose here, and many of the ones you’d want to hear from in a story about Pete Rose. Perhaps the most welcome presence in the first episode is legendary Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman, who quickly summarizes the insular, provincial nature of Cincinnati (something I can attest to, having spent six years living there as an outsider.)

Most Pilot-y Line: “I cover the Cincinnati Reds,” writer C. Trent Rosecrans notes, reflecting on Rose’s enduring popularity in Cincinnati. “I go all over the country covering the Reds… I have a theory that at every Cincinnati Reds game–spring training, exhibition, regular season, from Seattle to Miami, there is always one person wearing a #14 Reds jersey. We see ourselves as kind of an underdog… it’s overlooked, you know, we’re not Chicago. Pete is the kind of person who doesn’t have the greatest talent in the world, but has the greatest will. That’s the Great American Story, that’s what we all want, that’s what we want to believe in ourselves. In some ways–good and bad–Pete Rose is the embodiment of this city.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Pete Rose is a complicated figure, perhaps as complicated as any in the history of baseball. Whether you love him or hate him, Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose will keep your interest; the whole story is there, and you can pick your side.

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter , is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.

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