Pete Rose never treated an All-Star Game like a summer showcase, and the 1970 classic in Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium showed exactly why.
Back then, the game still carried real edge. The National League and American League were separate worlds, and the All-Star Game was one of the few chances for them to collide.
The pride was real. The hits were real.
The stakes, at least to the players, were real.
That’s a far cry from today’s version, which the source makes clear is more party than battle, more recognition than rivalry. The old guard played like the result mattered because, to them, it did.
Ted Williams learned that the hard way in the 1950 game at Comiskey Park, when he broke his elbow crashing into the wall while chasing a fly ball. Dizzy Dean’s 1937 All-Star Game ended with a line drive smashing his big left toe, and when a trainer told him it was fractured, Dean shot back, “Fractured? The damn thing is broken.”
Former Cincinnati Reds president Warren Giles carried that same competitive fire into the National League clubhouse when he became league president. It is said he told players, “If you want to make the All-Star team next year, you better play hard and win this year.”
Clyde Wright, who pitched for the California Angels, remembered it the same way: “When we played in All-Star Games, we wanted to kick each other’s butts. It wasn’t going to no party. We were playing a baseball game to win.”
No one embodied that mindset better than Rose.
To him, there was no such thing as a meaningless game. Spring training, the regular season, the World Series, the All-Star Game - everything was there to be won.
“It’s not one of those deals where some players say, ‘Ah, I’d rather have the days off.’ That wasn’t the way it was. We wanted to make the All-Star team and win the damn game,” he said.
That attitude came to a head in the 12th inning of the 1970 game. With the score tied 4-4, Rose singled off Wright and moved to second.
Jim Hickman followed with a one-hop single to center fielder Amos Otis. Rose rounded third and came barreling home.
Cleveland catcher Ray Fosse blocked the plate, which was legal at the time. Rose didn’t slide safely around him.
He lowered his shoulder and slammed into Fosse, knocking the mitt away and sending him sprawling as the ball skipped past. Rose scored the winning run, and the National League won 5-4.
“It’s not one of those deals where some players say, ‘Ah, I’d rather have the days off.’ That wasn’t the way it was. We wanted to make the All-Star team and win the damn game,” Rose said.
Rose explained his thought process afterward: “I actually started to slide head first, but Fosse had the plate blocked. I was saying, ‘If I slide now, I’m probably going to be out and break both my collarbones.’”
Brooks Robinson, who was at third base, summed it up simply: “I guess Rose didn’t have any place to go, so he ran over him.”
Rose added another layer to the moment with a line that fit his reputation perfectly: “My father was at the game and if I’d slid like a little sissy he would have waited outside and kicked the hell out of me.”
The collision became the defining image of that night, and for Fosse, it lingered long after. He played nine more seasons, but said the shoulder never truly recovered after the fracture and separation.
“My shoulder hurt constantly and became arthritic. I felt the pain long after I retired.”
Fosse also said the play was replayed before every All-Star Game after that. “And I watched it every time.
“I wouldn’t have changed a thing,” he said. “Long after I am gone (he died in 2021) I’m sure they will still be showing that game-ending collision to future generations.”
There was even a social side to the story before the first pitch. Rose and Sam McDowell were friends, and Rose invited McDowell and his wife to dinner at Sycamore Shores the night before the game.
McDowell asked if Fosse and his wife could come too, and Rose agreed. After dinner, the group went back to Rose’s house for conversation and cocktails.
Fosse spent much of the night talking about Johnny Bench, since he had never seen Bench play in person because there was no interleague play.
The crowd that night - 51,838, with President Richard M. Nixon among them - got the kind of All-Star Game that doesn’t exist anymore.
The American League had led 4-1 entering the ninth after Fosse scored the first run and drove in the second, then Brooks Robinson doubled in two runs in the eighth. But the National League pushed across three in the ninth, with Roberto Clemente’s sacrifice fly bringing in Joe Morgan to tie it before Rose finished the job in the 12th.
That’s the divide the source draws so sharply: then, the All-Star Game was a fight for bragging rights. Now, it’s a show.
And Pete Rose never played for the show.
“That’s the only way I knew how to play,” he said. “I played to win every game.
I played hurt. I played tired.
I played hard as hell. Don’t tell me it’s an exhibition.
Don’t ever tell me to take it easy.”
He never did.
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