Wilmington Morning News - May 20, 1980

Rose’s hustle helps Carlton gain 7^th victory

By Tom Tomashek, Staff Correspondent

PHILADELPHIA – The talk of the pending players’ strike continued, but Pete Rose insisted that until they tell him to put the uniform on a hanger, he can't worry about it.

Indeed, last night the Phillies first baseman played anything but like a man thinking strike as his hustling brand of play sparked a three-run Philadelphia seventh and a 6-4 victory over Cincinnati.

"He can make things happen," said Manager Dallas Green who joined the electrified turnout of 25,109 in awe of Rose, who scored from first on Bake McBride's soft single to put the Phils in front to stay. "I'm still a lotta fan... something like that has got to excite you. It's gotta excite a team and it did."

The Phils, who rallied to save the victory for left-hander Steve Carlton (7-2), trailed 4-2 with two outs in the seventh when they finally got through to loser Frank Pastore for four consecutive hits. Trillo started the surge with a double and Del Unser, batting for Carlton, followed suit with an RBI two-bagger.

Rose followed with an RBI single of his own to make it 4-4 and then turned the game around with his scintilating baserunning after McBride delivered a two-bounce single into right field. Rose was almost to third when rightfielder Ken Griffey fielded the ball. Then he knew he had home when he saw Griffey's throw get by second baseman Junior Kennedy into the hands of shortstop Rick Auerbach, who made a wild attempt to cut the streaking Rose off at the plate.

"You don't see that very often," said Rose. "In fact, I'm not sure I've ever done that since I got here. It's one of those plays where everything fell right for us and bad for them.

"I got a good start from first because Bake had a 3-2 count on him," he continued. "I knew I had third, so I was able to look back at the throw, and when I saw it heading for Kennedy, I broke for home. I don't think I even broke stride."

But Rose quickly directed some of the attention to the rest of the Philadelphia team, which has won five of its last seven games to pick up three games on Pittsburgh.

"When was the last time you saw a team get four straight hits with two out and two strikes?" he asked. "That took some doing. Reed also did a good job in relief and Greg's (Luzinski) homer in the eighth took a lot of pressure off all of us."

Luzinski led off the eighth with his eighth home run of the season.

Carlton, who got two innings of perfect relief from Reed, was not extremely sharp, despite logging nine strikeouts. He yielded 10 hits including John Bench's two-run shot in the fourth.

In fact, Pastore, 22, was probably the sharper of the two from an artistic standpoint.

"He's the best young pitcher that we've probably seen so far this season," said Rose. "He lost a little bit in those last couple of innings, but he did a good job against us... he had great velocity with his down pitches."

The Phils grabbed a 2-0 lead in the third when they strung together four consecutive singles off Pas-tore. Maddox started the surge, foU lowed by Carlton, Rose and McBride Rose's hit scoring Maddox and McBride's pushing Carlton home.

But after a brief visit from Manager John McNamara, Pastore settled down. With runners on first and second, he retired Mike Schmidt on strikes, and then got Luzinski and Bob Boone on force-play grounders.

Carlton, meanwhile, was alternately brilliant and vulnerable in the first three innings as he struck out five but yielded four hits. Then in the fourth, after Carlton stopped George Foster on strikes, Ray Knight singled and Bench hit a towering blast over the left-center wall to tie the game.

Carlton notched two more strikeouts in the fifth, but the Reds struck for two runs in the sixth off three hits and an intentional walk.

Once again, Carlton got Foster out to start the inning, but Knight came back with a double to right. Bench received an intentional pass and the. Phils almost got out of the inning with what would have been their third double play of the contest. But Larry Bowa's throw to Rose on the relay was off the mark. Rick Auerbach and Pastore followed with RBI singles to give Cincinnati a 4-2 lead.