year.
Pete had gone to Vietnam, too, although not by way of the draft like his brother. His was a three-week ambassadorship, in the off-season of 1967, a goodwill tour taken with a few ballplayers, including his idol Joe DiMaggio. The players went around talking to the troops about base-ball and the soldiers all asked DiMaggio about Marilyn Monroe—and DiMaggio’s face would darken and he would glare them into silence— and all the while as the ballplayers went from camp to camp through the searing hot jungle Pete would lighten spirits with the clubhouse banter he had brought along.
And although it was harrowing at times for Pete, the high-speed helicopter rides just above the treetops (“so they can’t get us with gunfire,” the pilot said) and the sounds of the distant or not-so distant explosions, and the smell of smoke and fire and most sobering and thudding of all, the sight one hot-moist dawn of body bags—19 of them Pete counted— being unloaded at a camp for transport home, disturbing as all of that was, this was not close to being a soldier’s experience. The ballplayers always knew they would be going home soon.
For Pete the trip was indelible most of all for his traveling with DiMaggio, talking hitting and baserunning with him. DiMaggio was a player, Rose long knew, who did not have quit in him. Later and through the years Pete would tell of helping Joe to bathe—that is, in the way bathing went over there, Pete pouring buckets of water through a kind of rawhide sieve over DiMaggio’s head while DiMaggio soaped himself behind a partition out-of-doors. “I’m the only guy who ever gave DiMaggio a shower,” Rose would say even decades later. “At least I hope I’m the only guy.” At some point well into his banishment years Pete would in the telling reprise his old Tommy Harper joke, and crack on a radio station that it was the great DiMaggio who looked like a dick with a man hanging off of him, and people would wonder why Pete had to be so crude like that, about DiMaggio.
When his time in Vietnam ended, Pete came home and had Christmas on Braddock Street and got ready for spring training, which was not at all the experience that Dave would have, beginning in the summer of 1969 and running through the fall of ’70. Sixteen months in all. And for what he went through and also what he missed, it is clear how very much Dave at the time, and all the more in hindsight, would have rather been at that All-Star Game in Cincinnati watching Pete step to the plate and seeing U.S. flags flapping in open splendor, than where he in fact was, 8,000 miles and an ocean away, wearing combat gear under the blistering morning sun, the flags inside the camp tents there a grim source of pride. Dave was a door gunner in Vietnam.
----
HE WAS bigger earlier than Pete, more strapping and more athletic. “The fastest white guy in Cincinnati,” is how Dave was known. He played football at Western Hills and like Pete before him Dave made highlights, his produced even playing on a god-awful team. DAVE ROSE ’ S RUNS BRIGHTEN DARK SEASON , read the yearbook spread after West Hi had gone winless in 1966, and there were photos of Dave as he “rambled around left end for a ten yard gain” or “broke through Elder’s line of defense to score” or brought back a kickoff 60 yards for a touchdown. Pete’s little brother big on game day. Dave made all-city as a halfback and he might have gone somewhere serious to play college ball—Oklahoma liked the looks of him, VMI wrote to him—if the thought of spending four more years in school had held any appeal to him at all. No. Dave would play baseball like his brother. He batted over .300 for Western Hills and tracked down balls in the outfield and had all kinds of home run power. West Hi won the state championship Dave’s senior year (he batted .430 down the stretch of the season) and afterward the Reds signed him to a minor league deal. He went off to Wytheville, Va., in
Pete had gone to Vietnam, too, although not by way of the draft like his brother. His was a three-week ambassadorship, in the off-season of 1967, a goodwill tour taken with a few ballplayers, including his idol Joe DiMaggio. The players went around talking to the troops about base-ball and the soldiers all asked DiMaggio about Marilyn Monroe—and DiMaggio’s face would darken and he would glare them into silence— and all the while as the ballplayers went from camp to camp through the searing hot jungle Pete would lighten spirits with the clubhouse banter he had brought along.
And although it was harrowing at times for Pete, the high-speed helicopter rides just above the treetops (“so they can’t get us with gunfire,” the pilot said) and the sounds of the distant or not-so distant explosions, and the smell of smoke and fire and most sobering and thudding of all, the sight one hot-moist dawn of body bags—19 of them Pete counted— being unloaded at a camp for transport home, disturbing as all of that was, this was not close to being a soldier’s experience. The ballplayers always knew they would be going home soon.
For Pete the trip was indelible most of all for his traveling with DiMaggio, talking hitting and baserunning with him. DiMaggio was a player, Rose long knew, who did not have quit in him. Later and through the years Pete would tell of helping Joe to bathe—that is, in the way bathing went over there, Pete pouring buckets of water through a kind of rawhide sieve over DiMaggio’s head while DiMaggio soaped himself behind a partition out-of-doors. “I’m the only guy who ever gave DiMaggio a shower,” Rose would say even decades later. “At least I hope I’m the only guy.” At some point well into his banishment years Pete would in the telling reprise his old Tommy Harper joke, and crack on a radio station that it was the great DiMaggio who looked like a dick with a man hanging off of him, and people would wonder why Pete had to be so crude like that, about DiMaggio.
When his time in Vietnam ended, Pete came home and had Christmas on Braddock Street and got ready for spring training, which was not at all the experience that Dave would have, beginning in the summer of 1969 and running through the fall of ’70. Sixteen months in all. And for what he went through and also what he missed, it is clear how very much Dave at the time, and all the more in hindsight, would have rather been at that All-Star Game in Cincinnati watching Pete step to the plate and seeing U.S. flags flapping in open splendor, than where he in fact was, 8,000 miles and an ocean away, wearing combat gear under the blistering morning sun, the flags inside the camp tents there a grim source of pride. Dave was a door gunner in Vietnam.
----
HE WAS bigger earlier than Pete, more strapping and more athletic. “The fastest white guy in Cincinnati,” is how Dave was known. He played football at Western Hills and like Pete before him Dave made highlights, his produced even playing on a god-awful team. DAVE ROSE ’ S RUNS BRIGHTEN DARK SEASON , read the yearbook spread after West Hi had gone winless in 1966, and there were photos of Dave as he “rambled around left end for a ten yard gain” or “broke through Elder’s line of defense to score” or brought back a kickoff 60 yards for a touchdown. Pete’s little brother big on game day. Dave made all-city as a halfback and he might have gone somewhere serious to play college ball—Oklahoma liked the looks of him, VMI wrote to him—if the thought of spending four more years in school had held any appeal to him at all. No. Dave would play baseball like his brother. He batted over .300 for Western Hills and tracked down balls in the outfield and had all kinds of home run power. West Hi won the state championship Dave’s senior year (he batted .430 down the stretch of the season) and afterward the Reds signed him to a minor league deal. He went off to Wytheville, Va., in
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