THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, a single sentence from baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti still reverberates: “The matter of Mr. Rose is now closed.” Those words, which cemented Pete Rose’s lifetime ban for gambling on the team he managed, landed like a gavel in August 1989: authoritative, unambiguous, final — and yet wholly untrue.
Rose was 83 years old when he died on Sept. 30. On Sunday, he was laid to rest after a 14-hour public viewing at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. For the final three and a half decades of his life, the matter of Mr. Rose was never closed. He stood as an avatar; like so many celebrities, the public believed he reflected something important inside of them. Rose was akin to being the 536th member of Congress, representing no single district but rather all of them. By the end, he had symbolized every shading of the myths of American exceptionalism, the traits this country has always believed make it different — and better — than everyone else.