Controversy follows Pete Rose all the way to the end

TOKYO — Pete  Rose, the major league’s all-time hit king with 4,256 hits, died recently, at the age of 83, eliciting huge attention in the American media. The tone was one of regret for a wasted life. Rose, as many of you know, was banned from baseball for gambling on the sport when he was the manager of the Cincinnati Reds. As a result, he was never elected to the Hall of Fame.

I met Rose two or three times over the years during his visits to Japan with postseason MLB teams. I interviewed him for Number Magazine some years ago in 1978 when he visited Japan with the Reds, staying in a deluxe suite at the Hotel New Otani. I had always thought of Pete Rose as a rough and tumble kind of guy, an uneducated country boy who was not very smart. That opinion changed after meeting him. During my two-hour interview with him in 1978, Rose railed about the dangers of free agency and the likelihood it would harm MLB.