Sport: Savoring the Extra Innings After 40

For Pete Rose and Carl Yastrzemski, it is a very good year

Baseball is a boy's game. "If you ever lose the little boy in you," shudder the fat men and the bald men in the knickers and the beanies, "well. . ." Well, it's over, that's all. You can lose a step, even two. You can lose the hop on your fastball, though you may have to learn a knuckler. But if you ever grow up, you can't be a Lost Boy any more. Sorry, those are the rules of never-never land.

If Pete Rose ever grows up, we will all grow old, and if Carl Yastrzemski ever grows old, well... well, it's over, that's all. The summer has been improved by the improvement of Yastrzemski, a Yaz of yore again and almost 43. At 41, Rose is just Rose, which Gertrude Stein somehow knew before The Sporting News. In the recordbook, they stand first and second among active players in games played, at-bats, hits, singles, doubles, extra base hits, total bases and runs scored. Their teams, the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Phillies, stand thicker than pine tar in taut pennant races as baseball resumes after last week's All-Star break. Though neither starred, Yastrzemski for the American League and Rose for the National were naturally in Montreal to confer, consult and otherwise hobnob with their fellow wizards. Since their base paths do not very often cross, it was a handy time to size them up and make a memory. In another country, in a National League city, the cheers were loudest and warmest for Yastrzemski. Every game, every play, is becoming precious.

How utterly different and amazingly alike can two men be? Though both are 5 ft. 11 in., Yaz is a lithe, athletic 181 Ibs., Rose a rippling, bulging 203. Their ways have been their own. The bigger man chops singles, the smaller one crashes home runs. While Yaz had to replace Ted Williams in Boston at 21, an impossible thing to do, Rose had to make it in his home town of Cincinnati, which ballplayers are almost never able to do. Both were nurtured and nudged by worshiped fathers who competed in organized sports into their 40s. In Bridgehampton, N.Y., between the potato-farming Yastrzemskis and the Skoniecznys on the maternal side, there were enough men and boys to field a Polish-American town baseball team that was something to sneeze at. Carl Sr. was the shortstop, Carl Jr. the second baseman. At 15, young Yaz experienced the unusual delight of joining his father in hitting back-to-back home runs. Now his own son Mike, 20, is a senior at Florida State and a major league prospect.

In Cincinnati, the first Pete Rose was as legendary as the second. Rose reflects: "When I was young, people would stop me on the street to tell me I could never be what my father was." The elder Rose was a banker and a semiprofessional football player at 42, very tough and singleminded. In order to persuade Pete's Little League manager to let the boy switch-hit, the father promised not to take Pete away on the family's summer vacations. "I never set foot out of Cincinnati," Rose says uncomplainingly, "until I went off to the minor leagues." Rather than allow summer school to intrude on a baseball season, Pete's father made him repeat the tenth grade. "My dad and I lived sports together. We were playing basketball together in 1970 the night before he had a heart attack and died."