"Cincinnati, a town that has been waiting for two generations for somebody to play like Pete Rose, may have had it all along in Barry Larkin, who on Monday learns whether he'll be the next Red to make it to Cooperstown.

If he makes it – and the informed speculation is that he will (with somewhere between 75 percent and 85 percent of the vote; 75 percent is needed for election) – he will become only the 10th shortstop and fifth Greater Cincinnatian elected by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA).

If ever there were an heir apparent to Rose, it was Larkin, who grew up on the sandlots of Cincinnati sliding headfirst like his idol.

"Pete didn't just slide headfirst into a base, he launched himself like Superman," Larkin told an Enquirer reporter in 2009. "Growing up, that's who I wanted to be. On the bases, Pete Rose; at shortstop, Davey Concepcion."

One would be hard-pressed to come up with two better examples in a single town of how to play the game than Larkin and Rose.

Rose was Larkin's first big league manager and would have been a sure-fire first-ballot Hall of Famer (maybe even the first unanimous one) if not for his gambling transgressions."