The recent death of a baseball great but a human sleaze got me thinking about that guy who… 

Hey, what was his name anyway?

I wonder if Pat would know?

I’ve been leaning on her a lot lately to remind me of the names of folks that I used to work with. It’s not that her memory is all that much better than mine, but she worked with some of them much longer than I did, so in those cases the names are better ingrained in her gray cells, and in other cases, well, she gets updated emails on some folks.

So I sent her a note something along the lines of:

Do you remember the guy who used to work in MSO back in the mid-80s who was short, wore glasses, whitish hair? He liked baseball, a Phillies fan, but he hated Pete Rose, never lost an opportunity to hammer on Pete Rose. I think his name might have been Tommie?

I didn’t hold out much hope, really as Pat wasn’t much of a Phillies fan, and in any case, MSO where “Tommie” worked, and where I briefly worked as well, was at the opposite end of the building from where Pat was stationed. So it was really a long shot.

But surprise! In no time Pat came back with the answer.

It was Tom Capolupo. She remembered because he was a friend of Tom Cardella’s, a good friend of hers, and both Toms used to go to Phillies games together. Apparently Tom Capolupo (that’s my “Tommie”) used to hold a baseball glove in front of his face in case a ball came his way. As far as she knew he was still alive, although Tom Cardella had died a while back.

As soon as I saw the name I remembered it, of course.

And I went to my browser to see what I could find out about him.

If the web is right, he is still alive at 93, but what surprised me most of all is that one of his previous addresses was at the Watermark—which is where my mother spent her final years.

I don’t know if their stays overlapped, but I don’t recall seeing anyone there who looked like him.

Of course, he may have just been there for a short time to recuperate from an operation or something like that and may not have been up and around.

Still, very interesting. 

Meanwhile, a reminder that Pete Rose really was a sleaze bag. 

There still are people crying for Pete Rose to be admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame. But 105 years ago Shoeless Joe (not the one from Hannibal, MO, the other one) was banned and he wasn’t anywhere near the sleaze bag that Pete Rose was.

Here’s a brief reminder:

… baseball player Pete Rose died yesterday. He was a great, great player, but a bad, bad person. Most people know that he bet on baseball games in which he was involved as a manager, and was punished by being banned from baseball permanently. One can argue that the penalty is too harsh, but he knew that was the price when he chose to break the rules and, as they say “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” After being booted from baseball, Rose seized on pretty much any opportunity to make money off his name, most obviously signing copious numbers of baseballs with… whatever message the person wanted. (Z) saw him once, sitting at a table outside a collectibles shop in Las Vegas, with no takers. It was actually kind of depressing.

Anyhow, some of the schemes Rose participated in to profit off his name were pretty grifty. He was also an overall sleazeball, beyond his gambling and his moneymaking schemes. He cheated on his taxes, for example, and he got in deep trouble with the IRS. He also admitted, under oath, that he had a sexual relationship with an underage partner. That makes Rose a statutory rapist.

Oh, and just to be clear, Tom Capolupo used to dump on Pete Rose while Rose was still playing for the Phillies, long before Rose started betting on baseball games or any of this other sleazy stuff came out. Tom was way ahead of his time.