2015By Matt Yoder on

It was impossible to predict what was going to happen when Fox Sports hired Pete Rose to be a baseball analyst this season.  Would Rose flame out and join the likes of Emmitt Smith as all-time great players who turned into television busts?  Would Rose use the opportunity as a way to ingratiate himself with America once again in his campaign to win over new commissioner Rob Manfred to reinstate him and get him in the Hall of Fame?  Would Rose be secretly filming a new reality show?

Anything and everything could have happened, and yet, I’m not sure “Pete Rose comedic superstar” was in the existing universe of a million possible outcomes.

During the Royals-Blue Jays rain delay, Pete Rose’s name was trending on Twitter because of this epic photobomb of C.J. Nitkowski that the FS1 crew had some fun with.

What was that, Pete?!?  Was he spacing out in some kind of trance?  Was he thinking about the Royals-Blue Jays money line?  Is this for a new season of Impractical Jokers?  Have you ever seen anything like that before on a national sportscast?  It’s sorta weird, but at least it’s getting people talking about FS1, right?

Rose also tried out some of his stand-up material on Frank Thomas…

And all this comes after Fox played a voicemail from Rose when he was stuck in traffic earlier in the series.  Thankfully (hopefully) everyone seems in on the fun here as Pete Rose’s FS1 tenure has turned into something of a joke.  A very funny joke, but a joke nonetheless.

As crazy as it seems, I think this is what FS1 was getting at when they launched as “The One for Fun” a couple years ago.  Who would have thought you could combine Pete Rose and Alex Rodriguez, two of the most controversial players in baseball history, and have a baseball studio show that was actually fun to watch.  I’m not sure how it happened, with Pete Rose memes being the most popular thing on the internet in 2015, but alas, here we are.

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