Charlie Hustle

The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball

De: Keith O'Brien

Narrado por: Ellen Adair, Keith O'Brien

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

A captivating chronicle of the incredible story of one of America’s most iconic, charismatic, and still polarizing figures—baseball immortal Pete Rose—and an exquisite cultural history of baseball and America in the second half of the twentieth century • "Comprehensive, compulsively readable and wholly terrific."—The Wall Street Journal

"Long before the inquiry into Ohtani's ties to betting, there was Pete Rose....Charlie Hustle chronicles one of the most polarizing figures in sports."—NPR, All Things Considered

“Baseball biography at its best. With Charlie Hustle, Pete Rose finally gets the book he deserves, and baseball fans get the book we’ve been craving, a hard-hitting, beautifully-written tale that will stand for years to come as the definitive account of one of the most fascinating figures in American sports history.”—Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author of King: A Life

Pete Rose is a legend. A baseball god. He compiled more hits than anyone in the history of baseball, a record he set decades ago that still stands today. He was a working-class white guy from Cincinnati who made it; less talented than tough, and rough around the edges. He was everything that America wanted and needed him to be, the American dream personified, until he wasn’t.

In the 1980s, Pete Rose came to be at the center of one of the biggest scandals in baseball history. He kept secrets, ran with bookies, took on massive gambling debts, and he was magnificently, publicly cast out for betting on baseball and lying about it. The revelations that followed ruined him, changed life in Cincinnati, and forever altered the game.

Charlie Hustle tells the full story of one of America’s most epic tragedies—the rise and fall of Pete Rose. Drawing on firsthand interviews with Rose himself and with his associates, as well as on investigators' reports, FBI and court records, archives, a mountain of press coverage, Keith O’Brien chronicles how Rose fell so far from being America’s “great white hope.” It is Pete Rose as we've never seen him before.

This is no ordinary sport biography, but cultural history at its finest. What O’Brien shows is that while Pete Rose didn’t change, America and baseball did. This is the story of that change.

©2024 Keith O'Brien (P)2024 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post

"O'Brien's narrative gain[s] impressive authority from the depth of [its] research. . . . A thorough account of one of the most fascinating rags-to-riches-to-infamy sagas of twentieth-century celebrityhood at a time when baseball was central to America's story writ large." —The New Yorker

Well researched and written for interest and comprehension

The narrator’s overly dramatic emotive style was both distracting and annoying. It is the worst feature of audible books. Also mispronunciation of proper names in this book. Please be more careful.

Sad life

I truly idolized Pete as a player when I was growing up.

I was a freshman in college when he was banished from baseball.

I wish he would have had a relationship with God.

Same facts excellent context

Really enjoyed this book. I wouldn’t say I learned anything new about Pete but definitely well framed in a way that contexualized all the actions in an engrossing way.

Mr hitman ain't perfect

A great book, well researched, written and narrated. A compelling story of one of the best baseball hitters to date.

Tough listen--because I love Pete Rose:

Well written examination of a flawed man. My sentimental side swelled with nostalgia. My justice-seeking side was left bruised. So many flawed humans are punished to a much lesser extent. My human side ached for him to find peace.
Let him into the HOF with an asterisk--just let him in.

[We, all, have asterisks.]

Really enjoyed the writers insight

I really enjoyed this story on Pete. Much has been written. But you always learn something new. The performer of this audio book was great as well. I enjoyed her voice and pace.

Not for those who want heroes

Exhaustively researched, and that’s what makes this such a quality read. Some may be put off by the narrator’s somewhat cold, emotionless delivery, but it fits here, since this is definitely not a “happily ever after” book. There are really no winners, no saints, and no gray area as to what the author’s feelings are about the main subject of the book. But his facts make him right on target.

A man of great ability and a terrible addiction

Pete Rose’s life is like a Greek tragedy. He attained more than he dreamed of, but lost it all because of his gambling addiction. This book is a fascinating story of Pete Rose’s rise and his fall as he succumbs to temptations and drags other people with him.

SOLID STORY OF HUSTLE, WINNING, AND A SAD ENDING NOT QUITE OVER!

As a lifelong fan of Pete Rose, I relived many of his triumphs, and many of his poor choices and failures. I come away with my mixture of feelings towards Pete - memories of admiration, anger, disgust, and - finally - pity and sadness.

Charlie Hustle, later known as the Hit King, had MLB itself as his biggest fan, and he lost that. Sadly, MLB and Baseball's Hall of Fame show little compassion today, and I don't see any change of heart for an increasingly frail old man who will turn 83 on 14 April.

Neither MLB or Cooperstown should waste time patting themselves on their collective backs over the nearly 34 years since that fateful year of 1989 - They have little to be proud of in several instances during their perspective Histories.

Rose will likely die outside the game he glorified with his hits, heart, and hustle - the game he still loves, sells, countless times, while setting many Major League and National League records along the way.

Charlie Hustle gambled away his game, and the Old Man now is all but out of time and forgiveness. That, to me, is particularly quite sad.

Well-written, and very fair. Good narration, too - A Solid Hit!

GRADE: A

His ego that couldn’t allow him to apologize.

The reader was very good. It was a good choice to have a woman read.