Remembering the Pete Rose-Bud Harrelson brawl from 50 years ago

They had to be separated 50 years ago. Their legacies are nearly inseparable today.

Bud Harrelson and Pete Rose infamously brawled near second base at Shea Stadium on Oct. 8, 1973, during Game 3 of the NLCS. Rarely is one player mentioned in a sentence without the other, even though both had distinguished and distinctive major-league careers, playing 40 years and more than 5,000 games between them.

“No matter what I did in my career, that fight stood out because it was the playoffs,” Harrelson once said. “It’s never far from people’s memories. I’ll be signing autographs and some kid will say, ‘My dad told me you got in a fight with someone.’ I’ll say, ‘Yeah, Pete Rose. I hit him in the face with my eye.’ ”

This is the  golden anniversary of one of the signature moments in the long, glorious baseball history of New York City — and Buddy, as he is mostly known, was a good companion for some nostalgia.

“That’s a good game for me to sit around and think about. I can never forget it. I don’t remember the score, but I remember every little thing about the fight,” the iconic former Mets shortstop and former Ducks part-owner once said of his scrap with the thorny Rose, which usually lands on any Top 10 list of memorable baseball fights.

There is sad irony in those words, spoken 16 years ago before Alzheimer’s disease robbed Harrelson, now 79, of his memory. He was sitting in his office at Citibank Park (now Fairfield Properties Ballpark), delighted to be retelling this tale yet again in a private interview with a Newsday reporter.

Harrelson called it the most memorable moment of his career. “How could it not be? Every person that met him over the years talked about it,” Kim Battaglia, Harrelson’s former wife and main caregiver these days, said with a soft, knowing chuckle. She visits him regularly in the memory care unit of a Long Island assisted living facility.

RoseBud had its seeds in what Harrelson insisted was an innocent comment made the day before the Melee at Shea. Mets lefthander Jon Matlack had tossed a two-hitter in a 5-0 victory at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium in Game 2 that evened the best-of-five series. That created a baseball buzz because the mighty Reds, in the early years of their dominant Big Red Machine period, had won 99 games in ’73 while the Mets (“It ain’t over ’til it’s over”) made a stunning comeback from last place to win the NL East title with a paltry 82-79 record.

“Matlack’s locker was next to mine and he was being interviewed on TV, which meant a million writers were all around me waiting for Jon,” Harrelson said. “One guy yelled, ‘Hey, Bud, what do you think about The Big Red Machine?’ I said, ‘They all looked like me hitting.’ [He batted .258 with zero home runs that season.] That’s all I said. I never mentioned anyone’s name. All the writers laughed.”

Harrelson learned later that some Reds did not get the joke. “One of the [Cincinnati] writers ran back to their locker room and my comment became a big deal,” he said. “I didn’t realize it until the next day [Game 3 at Shea Stadium]. They were supposed to take batting practice right after us, so they were on the field waiting.”

One Reds player was particularly upset. “[All-Star second baseman] Joe Morgan came up to me, grabbed my workout shirt — I remember it like it was yesterday — and he said, ‘If you ever say that about me again, I’m going to punch you out,’ ” Harrelson said. “Rusty [Staub, a Mets outfielder and former teammate of Morgan’s in Houston] was standing right there. He walked over and said, ‘Joe, Bud didn’t say anything about you.’ Joe said, ‘OK, but Pete [Rose] is hot. He’s gonna make something of this. He’s gonna fire up the team; he’s gonna come get you at second base.’ ”

Rose, further frustrated by trailing 9-2 in that game, got his chance in the fifth inning. He managed a one-out single off Jerry Koosman, and that put Harrelson in Rose’s crosshairs when Morgan smacked a hard grounder to first baseman John Milner, who quickly fired to second base.

“I had already thrown the ball to first base to make the double play and I received an elbow in the side of my head,” Harrelson said of Rose’s hard, late slide. “At the time, I thought it was a cheap shot and I told him so.”

Harrelson’s face was bloodied when his sunglasses were driven into the bridge of his nose by Rose’s helmet as he popped up after a barreling slide that, under today’s rules, would’ve prompted an automatic ejection. The 150-pound Mets infielder and the 185-pound Reds outfielder squared off, exchanging angry words.

“So I got in his face. I can honestly say I wanted to punch him, but I knew that wasn’t the right thing to do,” Harrelson said. “Now people are running at us. Something’s either got to start or stop.

“He just grabbed me, picked me up and threw me down. I hit the ground and he was coming to get me. That’s when [Mets third baseman Wayne] Garrett came in and rolled us over. I wound up on top. People were grabbing at us. There’s a picture in Sports Illustrated of one of their coaches choking me trying to hold me back and I’m going forward and half of my face is red. I’m thinking, ‘Wow, look what I started. What a mess.’ To tell you the truth, I thought we’d both get thrown out of the game, but after all that, neither one of us did.”

Mini-skirmishes broke out all over the field. Both bullpens had emptied. Mets pitcher Buzz Capra and Reds pitcher Pedro Borbon were going at it hard behind second base until Willie Mays broke it up. Harrelson remembered that Borbon “pushed Capra and took a bite out of his hat. It was kind of funny after a while. It got settled down pretty fast. But then it got pretty serious again.”

That’s because furious Mets fans pelted Rose when he went out to leftfield for the bottom of the fifth inning. “People were booing him, throwing stuff on the field,’’ Harrelson said. “You know Mets fans. They were protective and looked at it as a David and Goliath situation.’’

Goliath was greeted with a shower of fruits and vegetables, game programs, eggs, beer cans, even a whiskey bottle. After the latter, Reds manager Sparky Anderson waved his team off the field and demanded that the game be forfeited.

After a public address announcement threatening a forfeit, order eventually was restored. Mets manager Yogi Berra led a contingent of Mets players that included Mays, Staub, Tom Seaver and Cleon Jones out to leftfield to plead with the fans. The game resumed and the Mets prevailed, 9-2.

Harrelson told the media afterward, “I just wanted to tell him I’m not a punching bag. I didn’t like what he did and he didn’t like what I did.”

In the Reds’ clubhouse, Rose was defiant, telling reporters, “He called me a name and I grabbed him and we went down . . . I don’t feel it’s my obligation to apologize to anybody over this because I think I did the right thing . . . I’m supposed to give the fans their money’s worth and try to bust up double plays.”

The next day, Harrelson, already popular with Mets fans for his years of feisty leadership and clutch defense, cemented his legacy. “I always wore a Superman T-shirt under my jersey and there was a picture in the newspaper with me unbuttoning my jersey and showing a T-shirt with Superman X’d out. [In white tape, with the words “Ha Ha!! written on it.] You know, I’m not Superman. It’s over. Let’s move on,” he said.

The Mets, after being extended to five games, moved on to the World Series, where they lost in seven games to the Oakland A’s. The Big Red Machine moved on to greatness, winning back-to-back World Series in 1975 and ’76.

Rose, 82, and Harrelson maintained a cordial relationship and genuine mutual respect through the years. They could laugh about their sons having had a scrap as 10-year-olds when their dads were teammates on the 1979 Phillies.

They appeared together at numerous autograph sessions, signing photos and posing with boxing gloves. Harrelson owns a signed photo of the two basebrawlers inscribed, “Bud, Thanks for making me famous. Pete Rose.”

Rose used to sign his photos “It’s better to win the fight than the game.” So Harrelson countered with “It’s better to win the game than the fight,” adding “National League Champs, 1973.”

Harrelson told Fox Sports in 2013 on the 40th anniversary of the event, “It was baseball. I had a lot of respect for the way he played. I just didn’t like what he did at that moment.”

Rose told the New York Daily News in 2018, “I’ve never said anything negative about Bud on that play. That was just two aggressive players playing for the right to go to the World Series.”

In the winter of 2005, they made an appearance at Roosevelt Field. “We were signing pictures of the fight and laughing,” Harrelson said. “His son’s name came up. He’d bounced around in other leagues. Pete says, ‘Pete Jr. wants to keep playing. He still loves the game.’ So I gave him a chance.”

Rose’s son played for Harrelson’s Ducks in 2005 and 2007.

Said Battaglia, “Buddy was always proud of the fact that, years later, he signed Pete Jr.”