I love every word of this comment from Brilliant Reader Alejo:
Pete Rose played winter baseball for the Caracas' Leones one season in the sixties. He was already obsessively competitive and is remembered as both a mensch and a defensive liability at second base. No one ever questioned his guts though.
He would get out of the park, have a beer and a steak and scarper to the horse races, a behaviour that immediately led Venezuelans to consider Rose a capital fellow.
Some people are so great they should be put apart from themselves, so they don't spoil everything (see Maradona, Diego).