Where Have All the Weirdos Gone?

Baseball once let characters shape the game, now it shapes the characters.

Baseball used to be full of weirdos.

Guys who talked to the ball. Who pitched like they were untangling a knot. Who wore their socks inside-out for a month because the hits kept falling. The kind of players who made you lean forward in your seat not because of what they did last game, but because you had no idea what they’d do next.

Rickey Henderson spoke about himself in the third person and once framed his first stolen base. Luis Tiant spun his body like he was trying to catch a glimpse of God in center field. Mark Fidrych talked to baseballs and groomed the mound like it was a Zen garden. Manny being Manny wasn’t a tagline it was an inevitability. Oscar Gamble’s hair wasn’t a style, it was a declaration.

Pete Rose was something else entirely, baseball’s walking contradiction. On the field, he played with the fury of a middleweight boxer. Off the field, he had style and swagger: flashy rings, sharp suits, a gambler’s grin. He lived fast, talked loud, and never hid from who he was, even…