Pain lingers 31 years after violent crash

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Today: Ray Fosse's 1970 collision with Pete Rose still hurts - physically and emotionally.

Just last week in Minnesota, Ray Fosse's partner on Oakland A's broadcasts, Ken Korach, asked him if he wanted to go golfing. Feeling the familiar ache in his left shoulder, Fosse declined.

"I hate to go out and after 13 holes, I have to say I feel miserable and have to leave," Fosse said.

In July, it will be 31 years since Pete Rose knocked Fosse into baseball history, scoring the winning run in the 1970 All-Star Game in the 12th inning by bowling over the 23-year-old Cleveland Indians catcher.

Fosse doesn't need to see replays of the game's most famous collision - yes, he owns a copy, a gift from broadcaster Curt Gowdy - or relive it in countless interviews over the years to recall the violent impact of the play. He feels it almost daily, whenever he tries to lift his arm and is stopped short by the pain.

"One day it will feel great, and then I might sleep on it incorrectly and really feel it," he said in a phone interview from Minnesota. "I've learned to deal with it."

He has learned to deal with the nagging question that still tugs at him: What direction would his career have gone if Rose hadn't irretrievably altered his future? Heading into the game at Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium, Fosse was one of the game's brightest young catchers, actually drafted ahead of Reds legend Johnny Bench in 1965.

Fosse entered the All-Star Game batting .313 with 16 homers and 45 runs batted in. But the collision left him with a fractured and separated left shoulder that went undetected by X-rays until the following spring because the swelling was so severe. Almost unbelievably, Fosse was back in the Indians' lineup when the season resumed in two days, and he played for two more months until a broken finger finally sidelined him.

Fosse, now 54, was never the same player. Altering his swing because of the pain in his shoulder, Fosse hit two more home runs that season, and just 41 more in his career, which lasted until 1979 (including 11 games with the Mariners in 1977). He made one more All-Star appearance and won two World Series titles with the A's.

"I had the swing in the first half of that year you dream about having the rest of your career," Fosse said. "I never got it back. I was never the offensive player from that point I was in the first half of the season. That was probably the most disappointing thing throughout my career."

Fosse has also learned to deal with his feelings about Rose, which have taken a dramatic, dark turn over the years. At first, he believed that Rose made a clean baseball play with no malice involved. But because of comments by Rose, Fosse has come to believe the collision was intentional and avoidable.

Though he stops short of bitterness in discussing the play, it is clear that he harbors no fondness for baseball's all-time hit king, who served jail time for income tax evasion in 1990 in a prison in Marion, Ill. - the town where Fosse was born and raised.

The game was tied in the 12th inning when Rose drilled a two-out single. Another hit moved Rose to second, before Jim Hickman of the Cubs singled to center field.

The play is etched in our minds for eternity - Rose rounding third, exhorted to score by third-base coach Leo Durocher. AL center fielder Amos Otis comes up throwing, his peg a few feet up the line. Rose seems on the verge of starting one of his patented head-first slides, but instead, as Fosse moves up the third-base line to field Otis' throw, Rose lowers his shoulder and smashes into him, knocking the glove off Fosse's hand. Fosse had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Rose missed the first three games of the season's second half with a deep thigh bruise. He missed only seven more the entire decade of the '70s.

"First of all, I wasn't trying to block the plate," Fosse said. "You block the plate if you have the baseball or know the ball and runner are going to arrive at the same time. I was up the line trying to catch the ball and then I'd look for him and try to tag him. I figure he'd hook-slide around me and that would be it."

Watching the replays initially, Fosse was satisfied with Rose's actions.

"Pete later said he started to slide head first, but he had no choice. That would be fine if he left it at that."

But Fosse was stunned to read a few years later a quote from Rose in The Sporting News in which he said he couldn't have looked his father in the eye if he had made the play differently. In his 1989 autobiography, Rose wrote, "Besides, nobody told me they changed it to girls softball between third and home."

"That hurt, because he knew what he did to me," Fosse says now. "Basically, my career went downhill. I developed bad habits at the plate, never regained my form, and then someone says he did it intentionally. I don't know if it was to be the kind of person he was supposed to be, so-called Charlie Hustle.

"A lot of people looked at it as his style of play, even though it meant running over a catcher."

That All-Star Game, Fosse says, "eventually became part of (Rose's) package. I guess, from his standpoint, it was a positive thing. Unfortunately, I was on the negative end."

Larry Stone can be reached at 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com.