The Rose-Bud Incident: 1973 Pete Rose-Bud Harrelson playoff brawl

[The Gray Eagle]

The 50th anniversary of this legendary brawl was the other day:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8xKLnO4hOs

Guess how many players in this wild brawl were given suspensions, or even ejected from the game? Zero. It was different back then.

After Jon Matlack had shut down the Big Red Machine in the second game of the NLCS by hurling a 5-0 shutout, tensions were created between the two teams when Bud Harrelson spoke to the press after that game. Harrelson, a .236 career hitter with no power, said that Matlack “made the Big Red Machine look like me hitting today.”2
During batting practice before the third game, Reds second baseman Joe Morgan confronted Harrelson near the batting cage. Morgan shared his displeasure with Harrelson’s comments and Rusty Staub, who was standing nearby, had to step between the two players and defuse the situation.3 Although Morgan and Harrelson made their peace, not everyone was ready to let bygones be bygones.

The fans at Shea were going wild. The Mets were on the verge of being one game away from playing in World Series. This wasn’t sitting well with the Reds, who were getting very frustrated, especially Rose. When he popped out in his first at-bat, he yelled at Koosman to “throw the ball, you big, dumb donkey” as he walked back to the dugout.4
In the top of the fifth Rose singled off Koosman with one out. Morgan grounded to first baseman John Milner, who threw to Harrelson trying to get a double play. Sliding hard to try to break up the double play, Rose barreled into Harrelson and knocked him down. Harrelson completed the twin killing anyway, and then he and Rose began brawling. Both benches cleared and it took 10 minutes to separate Rose and Harrelson. Despite the fracas there were no ejections.5

https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/october-8-1973-harrelson-rose-square-off-as-mets-win-game-3-in-nlcs/#sdendnote5sym

There have been a few new stories about it published recently.
NY Mag talked to Rose (paywalled):
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/pete-rose-mets-reds-fight-new-york-baseball.html?

Typically, Rose can't keep his story straight and just says whatever he thinks will make him look the best at any given time:

These days, Rose can’t seem to decide which version of the story he likes best. Sometimes, he argues that he was just doing what he always did. He was living up to his nickname, “Charlie Hustle.” He was playing hard. “You know how many second basemen or shortstops I knocked on their ass in my career?” Rose asked me once. “Bud Harrelson was just another one.”
Other times, often in the same conversation, he suggests that he was intentionally trying to take out Harrelson, that he was upset about Harrelson talking trash the day before, that he needed to send a message to Harrelson — a much smaller man, 50 pounds lighter than Rose, with far more limited talents — and that he didn’t care if he started a fight because Harrelson was out of line. “When you’re a 150-pound shortstop — and you’re in the playoffs — don’t say things to ignite the opposition,” Rose said as a sort of warning decades later. “You understand what I’m saying?”

The New York fans reacted as you might imagine:

The epic brawl that followed Rose’s aggressive slide cleared both benches, incited New Yorkers at the stadium to pelt the field with garbage for minutes to come, nearly forced the Mets to forfeit when a whiskey bottle came flying out of the upper deck and almost hit Rose in the head in left field, and revealed something important about baseball at the time.
The sport was neither perfect nor polished, and that was why people loved it. Despite the chaos on the field that day after Rose and Harrelson tumbled into the dirt at second base, not a single player would be ejected, suspended, or punished in any way — an outcome that is impossible to imagine today.
“Baseball to me during that time was a spirited and rugged sport — not a passive and gentle sport like we see most of the time now,” said Cleon Jones, the Mets left-fielder during the playoffs in 1973. “It was a different game.”

A brief description of the ensuing mayhem:

On impact, Rose and Harrelson exchanged words, cursed some more. “And I just grabbed him,” Rose told me later. “I just grabbed him. And then Wayne Garrett came in from third, and he started the whole mêlée.” Garrett, the Mets third-baseman, was just trying to protect the much smaller Harrelson. But Rose liked to blame Garrett for what happened next: multiple fights at second base, players throwing sucker punches in the pile, and Reds reliever Pedro Borbon swinging at anyone in a blue hat. “Guys scattered all over the place,” recalled Jon Matlack, a pitcher for the Mets who was in the pile trying to peel guys apart. “There were fights on the field from a couple of guys.”
When it was over, there were hats strewn everywhere, and Borbon accidentally placed a Mets cap on his head — a mistake that enraged him so much that he took his frustration out on the hat itself. “He started biting it and ripping it,” recalled Tony Pérez, Rose’s Hall of Fame teammate. Borbon was acting, Pérez said, “like a dog,” while the fans behaved even worse. For minutes afterward, they threw trash at Rose, including that bottle of whiskey, and gave Reds manager Sparky Anderson no choice but to pull his team off the field.

The Mets had to send a few of their most-liked players, including Willie Mays, Rusty Staub, and Tom Seaver, to the outfield to try to calm down the fans:

New York manager Yogi Berra sent a contingent of Mets players to the outfield to bargain with the fans. The fans ultimately stopped throwing trash at Rose. New York won game three without further incident and then won the pennant two days later in yet another scene that’s hard to imagine today. As the Mets recorded the final out, thousands of fans stormed the field in Queens, forcing players to run for their lives just to make it to the dugout.
It was raw. It was wild. It was dangerous.
It was baseball.

Fan-shot silent film of Mets fans burning a Reds pennant in the crowd:
View: https://youtu.be/pZAoJgLIQ90?si=kyAWxxkGWwO8QKnl&t=159

Bud Harrelson gives his side of the story:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDkRC520-iY

The New York Times report from 1973:
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/10/09/archives/mets-win-9-to-2-as-fight-erupts-lead-playoff-21-fans-hurl-debris.html
They note that after the whiskey bottle almost hit him, Rose threw trash BACK at the fans:

Then, while Mayor Lindsay and the rest of the crowd watched in amazement, Yogi Berra led a peace delegation across the outfield lawn to quiet the fans—Tom Seaver, Cleon Jones, Rusty Staub and 42‐year‐old Willie Mays.
They stood in the no man's land in left field, where Rose had just ducked a whisky bottle and where the Cincinnati outfielder had, pegged junk back at the box‐seat customers.
With his arms outstretched, Mays made his first appearance since announcing his retirement two weeks ago, and appealed with feeling for calm. Then the mission marched back to the dugout 100 yards away, nine attendants cleared the debris and the game continued.

The Mets radio broadcast says Rose threw at least two bottles back at the crowd:
View: https://youtu.be/2T6Xypd6CHM?si=DHmveAEXZACHKUq_&t=6966

 

[joe dokes]

Ahh..the dulcet tones of Bob Murphy & Lindsay Nelson. ("Reminiscent of 1934 in Detroit"!!)

Typical Rose -- only had 50 pounds on Harrelson.

I was listening to that game while sitting in the shul during Hebrew school. (A special session, as the Yom Kippur war had started a day or 2 before.) I had a transistor radio in my pocket, the earphone wire up my shirt and hidden by my longish hair and ridiculously large1973-era shirt collar. My friend sitting next to me was doing the same. I'm surprised I wasn't hit by a bus afterwards.

 

[Van Everyman]

Is there any player who has fallen further in stature than Rose? Guy was a god when I was a kid – hits record, last player manager, legendary passion for the game. Now he is not only a completely discredited asshole but half the once charming stories about him look like him being an asshole person in retrospect.

 

[wonderland]

OJ Simpson?

 

[bob burda]

Denny McLain....though he was always a bit of a bad boy (getting suspended for gambling as a player before turning to crime afterwards), it was a very long fall.

I'll bet there are still people who would defend Rose, think he should be in the Hall, since he was Charlie Hustle, had the hits record, and all that. I don't think there are many OJ defenders, though there might have been at one time. McLain is not as well known, but I would say he NEVER had any defenders.

 

[snowmanny]

My recollection is that the umps asked Anderson to remove Rose from the game to calm the crowd and he refused.

Also, anyone paying attention knew Rose was a blowhard way back then.

 

[joe dokes]

My recollection is that the umps asked Anderson to remove Rose from the game to calm the crowd and he refused.

Also, anyone paying attention knew Rose was a blowhard way back then.

So Rose for longevity; OJ for peak?

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

Aaron Hernandez? We have played this game before

 

[snowmanny]

Aaron Hernandez? We have played this game before

Mac Jones

 

[joe dokes]

Aaron Hernandez? We have played this game before

Wasn't nearly good enough as a player. Like Carruth.

 

[joe dokes]

Also, anyone paying attention knew Rose was a blowhard way back then.

Oh yeah...

Rose then explained that he felt he had no choice but to keep Fosse from tagging him out at home plate because Rose had to try to impress his father, who was in attendance.
"I've got to do everything I can to score there. My dad's at the game," Rose said in 2017. "The reality is I missed the next three games. He didn't miss any. And he went on to play nine more years. But I ruined his career? I wasn't trying to hurt him. If I wouldn't have knocked Ray Fosse on his ass, you would not have known who he was."

What Pete Rose said in 2017 of All-Star Game collision with Ray Fosse (cincinnati.com)

 

[CaptainLaddie]

Denny McLain....though he was always a bit of a bad boy (getting suspended for gambling as a player before turning to crime afterwards), it was a very long fall.

I'll bet there are still people who would defend Rose, think he should be in the Hall, since he was Charlie Hustle, had the hits record, and all that. I don't think there are many OJ defenders, though there might have been at one time. McLain is not as well known, but I would say he NEVER had any defenders.

You gotta listen to the Dollop episode about him. It's incredible.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fFi6zq0fms

 

[bankshot1]

Rose-Bud?

Can we say that Charlie Hustle sled into 2nd?

 

[Vandalman]

Yes we Kane.

 

[Ted Cox 4 president]

IIRC, Mets- Reds NLCS was more newsworthy than Spiro Agnew's resignation, relegating it to a sub-headline on the front page of either the New York Post or the Daily News or maybe both.