When Pete Rose signed with the Phillies, he was viewed as the missing piece for a team that needed to learn how to win playoff games. The World Series vindicated the expenditure on Rose, but now, three years after the fact, the team was starting to think about the future.
During this week in 1983, questions about how much Rose would be given a breather we starting to come up. The manager at the time, Pat Corrales, had mentioned giving Rose a day or two here and there, but Rose was having none of it.