The year is 1979. The Phillies are playing the Reds. Pete Rose tries to steal second, and the throw arrives late. The ump signals safe, and instead of arguing the call, Cincinnati second baseman Joe Morgan just says: “It’s Pete Rose of the Philadelphia Phillies!” Never mind that Morgan and Rose were teammates for six years on the Reds. Never mind that Rose would’ve been announced earlier as part of the starting lineup, or that he would’ve made it to first base in some way before taking second. It's a commercial, so you have to cut it some slack.
Still, it stands to reason that Joe Morgan would not be particularly shocked to see Rose at second. But he also wasn’t paying all that close attention if he only noticed Rose when the two were right next to each other. The scenario raises a lot of questions, but not necessarily the one that Morgan asks: “And what kind of aftershave you using?”
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, this sort of thing was on everyone’s mind. What, America demanded to know, does Pete Rose smell like? Or, anyway, that was the case in the world of the Aqua Velva Pete Rose Cinematic Universe (AVPRCU, for short). Rose filmed at least four commercials in which he answered the question, sometimes in song. The world of these commercials was one where Rose’s grooming habits were front and center.
Pete Rose died Monday at 83. He was a legendary compiler of things like base hits and incidents in which he was a creep. But, in a different era for athlete advertisements, Rose compiled Shaquille O’Neal-level numbers (adjusted for era and inflation) as a pitchman. He told people to eat Milk Duds and Hungry Man and Wheaties. He advertised the Atari Home Run video game. With his son, Rose sold the third edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. What’s smelling good without having something inside, too? Later, he pitched kids on Kool-Aid in an ultra-neon 1986 ad, and told them to eat Nestle Crunch. There were more naturally talented pitchmen, but Rose's tenacity ensured that he was on another level when it came to telling viewers just what Pete Rose wanted them to do. The 20-plus ads featuring Rose that I could find on YouTube bear this out.
The Aqua Velva series is the most developed of those. The Joe Morgan ad is just too funny. Rose tells Morgan that he’s an Aqua Velva man and Morgan remembers instantly. “Oh, that’s right!” he says. “A man wants to smell like a man.” Rose sings the praises of the product's clean fragrance and how cool and refreshing it is, and then he literally sings the tagline: “There’s something about an Aqua Velva man!” Rose is not the best singer, but it does not matter. In this world, all that matters is how Pete Rose smells.
The Morgan ad is not even the only time Rose sings in a commercial. In an early ad, Rose is heckled from the stands with this barb: “Hey, Pete Rose! What’s a man really want from an aftershave?” The heckler is played by Vic Tayback, who played diner owner Mel Sharples on the long-running sitcom Alice. The show ran into the mid-1980s, airing 202 episodes; Tayback was a prominent TV character for a decade. He was also known for his guest spots on The Love Boat and made one-off appearances on plenty of well-remembered shows.
In this world, though, Tayback was just like everyone else—concerned first and foremost with how Pete Rose smelled/wanted to smell. His heckle actually stops the game! Rose, Tayback, the umpire, and a vendor gather together on the field to sing a whole song about Aqua Velva. There really is something about it, they say.
The vendor is notably more into it than anyone else. He really wants to feel like a man. But Rose is the star here, getting two solos. Again, he is not the best singer. He is not really an average singer. But, as we’ve established, this is a world where Pete Rose can sing out of tune and it does not matter. Does he smell like a man? Great. That’s the story.
It really is. A reporter gets in on the action, too. In one spot, perhaps playing off Melissa Ludtke’s fight for access to pro team locker rooms, Rose is taking batting practice when a reporter asks him what he wants from his aftershave. Rose does not skip a beat. *crack* “No fancy perfumes!” *crack* “Or fancy bottles!” *crack* “Or fancy prices.” He’s locked in, even as he explains he does not want a fancy bottle to hold what for all intents and purposes is a perfume, fancy or not. I do think it’s a great trick by the brand’s owners at the time, J.B. Williams Company, to focus on the product’s lack of fancy bottles. It’s just good corporate sense to save money on packaging by telling potential customers the product’s supposed to look like that.
The end of the ad is gross. The reporter tells him there is something about an Aqua Velva man, and puts her hand on his shoulder as Rose flips his bat away. There’s a real journalistic lapse here. Rose is answering a question about the product, and says “A man wants to…” The reporter interrupts and finishes his thought: “… feel like a man.” C’mon! Who knows what Pete Rose was going to say at that point. It probably would’ve been “feel like a man,” but maybe he’d end it with “interrupt a baseball game to do a barbershop quartet bit with Mel from Alice.” As a reporter, you can’t talk too much when a source is answering a question.
Ads about Rose’s overall glamour were not limited to products designed to smell. In a pitch for Zenith televisions, Rose posits the company developed its Color Sentry line of televisions specifically to make sure viewers could see him better. “You know why Zenith developed Color Sentry,” he says. “Well, you ever see my face and it looks too red, and other times it’s all washed out.” He doesn’t play for the Cincinnati Pinks, Rose jokes.
Rose’s son had a brief stint with the Cincinnati Reds in 1997 and a longer one in minor league ball. This was long after the character of Pete Rose Jr. was introduced in the Aqua Velva universe. In those ads, Rose Jr. wonders when he’ll start shaving, and his pops tells him he has quite a while until he has to worry about that, but adds that he has something to look forward to. Rose Jr. has been trained well: “Aqua Velva—right, dad?” The conversations around the dinner table in the Rose household must’ve centered around scents, how a man wants to smell, why fancy bottles are for wimps, et cetera. This is how most conversations went during that era, I assume. By 1980, when this commercial aired, a singer had been entrusted with the jingle instead of Pete, robbing us of one last solo from the master.
But the story does not end there. The world of television commercials was so concerned with Pete Rose’s head 40 years ago that he was hired to shill two different hair care products in the 1980s. Rose was a man who could’ve been an Honorary Stooge for his Moe Howard haircut, but this only added to his mystique.
In one ad, Rose admits to using certain substances to take the gray out of his hair. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret: If it weren’t for Grecian Formula, they’d start calling me a gray-haired ballplayer,” Rose says to the camera. “But gray hair’s not for Pete Rose.” Apparently Grecian Formula works so well and so gradually, no one will be able to tell the difference. He told viewers it would make them play younger, too. Normally this would seem like nonsense, but this was Pete Rose. He’d been telling TV viewers for years about what to do after shaving. Clearly he’d also know what to do after a shower.
By 1987, Rose was not quite the pitchman he'd once been during his bathroom-related men’s product heyday. He had to be advertised as a “baseball superstar.”
And he had dandruff! Rose was still hanging on, however, with hair that absolutely looked like it had not been colored with Grecian Formula, no way no how. It was the second time Pete Rose had advertised a hair care product on television, and it would be the last. One can only imagine why.
By 2000, Rose was doing ads for MAACO in which he explained how many games he had played. He had a running gag in WWE where Kane beat him up. He did an ad for Skechers (where he was “in the hall,” by which he meant his home’s hallway) and a local furniture shop. But his legacy was secure by then, and he should be remembered best for his finest years—a time when he felt, smelled, and sometimes sang like a man.
