Most families have their own language in some areas of their lives. We have several things our daughters say instead of the real words that other persons would use. And just recently, on the very last day of September of this year, we had an example of one of the words we use instead of the correct one. It was the day Pete Rose died. We have been talking about Pete Rose for at least 40 years. But we don’t call him Pete Rose. In our house, we call him Pete “Donuts.” And you may ask, “How did that come about?”
It was back when our younger daughter was being taught all about professional baseball by her older sister.
Names of teams and its players comes to mind. When the younger one was told about Pete Rose, she heard it as “Pete Rolls.” Then when his name was brought up again, she had changed the “rolls” part to Pete Donuts. (Rolls are similar to donuts, so then it stuck.) Now, it makes sense. Because all four of us have referred to him as “Pete Donuts” ever since. For 30 or 40 years now, that has been a name in our vocabulary at our house.
We probably have lots of those kind of words we use. (For example, we always call the quarter or half moon a “broken’ moon). In connection with Pete, we have used the words “Cincinnati Purples,’ not Reds, but Purples. Reason for that is that one day, long, long ago, while watching them play, (on our brand new color TV) our younger daughter walked in the room and when we told her that we were watching the “Cincinnati Reds,” she said, “Looks like the Cincinnati Purples to me!” That was back in the years that we often had to adjust our color on our new color TV. Nowadays, you never have to adjust anything, you just turn it on and it’s perfect.
It’s been a very long time since we have been thinking of the statistics making up the history of Pete himself.
So, I called my daughter, who keeps track of everything in baseball, and asked her to send me a list of his statistics so as to use them here. And this is the list she sent:
• Born April 14, 1941 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
• Hometown boy. Played for the Cincinnati Reds. Played for 23 years.
• Was the manager of the Reds from 1984 to 1989.
• He won three World Series: two with the Reds, one with the Philadelphia Phillies.
• Still this day holds the MLB record with the most base hits – 4,256.
• Two-time Gold Glove winner.
• Three batting titles
• Career batting average of .303 with 160 home runs.
• In 1989, he was banned from baseball for betting on baseball.
• His No. 14 is retired in Cincinnati, which means no other player will wear that number.
• His nickname was “Charlie Hustle” because it was the way he played while running the bases.
So, if by any chance you are over to our home and you hear us talking about Pete Donuts, you will know who we are talking about.
Kay E. Conklin is a retired Delaware County recorder who served four terms. She graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University with a degree in sociology and anthropology.
