Crowds gather in the rain to pay tribute to Pete Rose. ‘Maybe these are tears from heaven’

The line started before 3 a.m. with a single, steadfast 65-year-old mourner.

Kenny Stroup drove more than 400 miles to pay his respects to Pete Rose, all the way from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, and he stood in the rain for more than four hours before Great American Ball Park’s Gate A opened and the public was admitted to the late Hit King’s visitation on Sunday.

“I’m quiet right now, but once I’m inside — this guy, man, unbelievable,” Stroup said.

This was shortly after 6 a.m., when only a handful of intrepid fans had joined Stroup’s soggy vigil. They had come from Florida and Tennessee and South Carolina to view the wooden box bearing Rose’s ashes, to reminisce about his prolific and distinctive career and to rage at the permanent suspension that has kept baseball’s career hits leader from its Hall of Fame.

“They hate him because they ain’t him,” Mike Hill said.

“I saw him play for the first time in ’85 when he was chasing (Ty) Cobb’s record. I was 4 years old and just always loved Pete Rose. As I grew up, I always wore No. 14. I remember standing in front of the mirror mimicking his stance. I’ve got all of his baseball cards.”

Being from Cincinnati’s West Side, where Cincinnati native Pete Rose called home, that feeling was just ingrained, Hill said.

“Everybody wanted to be Pete Rose.”

For more than two decades and 4,256 hits, Rose embodied effort on a baseball field, transcending his own modest talents with unsurpassed desire and dedication. He was proof that nearly anything was possible if you attacked the game headfirst and every single day, year after year after year.

He was perceived as the prime example of what a ballplayer ought to be right up to the point where his life took a turn toward Greek tragedy by betting on games and earning a ban that has outlasted his life.

Rose, who broke into the major leagues at age 21 in 1963, died in Las Vegas on Sept. 30. He was 83.

His complicated legacy was captured Sunday in the juxtaposition of a photo of Rose’s trademark slide with the text “14 FOREVER” that spanned the stadium’s right-field scoreboard right next to an ad for “Bet MGM.” Thirty-five years since Rose was banished to baseball’s permanently ineligible list, his sport has embraced gambling in pursuit of profit, forsaking the moral high ground it had occupied since the 1919 Black Sox scandal to tap a gushing revenue stream.

John Bradford, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, attended Sunday’s visitation in a gray 1960s Reds road jersey — one of “about five” Rose jerseys in his wardrobe — feeling “a little bit of happiness and a little bit of sadness. And anger.

“I’m pissed that he didn’t get in the Hall of Fame,” Bradford said. “Every ad that pops up now and all over social media (promotes gambling sites). They cram it down your throat.”

Shelley Brown-Davies, a former Cincinnatian now of Simpsonville, South Carolina, recounted being stopped for speeding by a police officer curious about the license plate on her Ford Escape: “LET 14 IN.” Three years ago, for her 57th birthday, Brown-Davies’ sisters arranged for a video greeting from Rose, whose laughter over her license plate is preserved on her cell phone.

“There’s no way I would have missed this,” she said Sunday, almost an hour before the gate opened. “I came here this early because I thought this (line) was going to be wrapped around blocks and blocks.”

With the visitation stretching over 14 hours — a nod to Rose’s uniform number — and the rain falling steadily throughout the morning, the initial lines were short. Only a few dozen people entered the stadium when it first opened, waiting their turn on a long red carpet in the corridor above the third base line to view the memorabilia and floral tributes flanking the container with Rose’s remains.

It sat atop a tall red and black pedestal and carried a photo of Rose pointing to the sky following his record 4,192nd hit.

Pete’s oldest daughter, Fawn, stood at the end of the display, accepting hugs and condolences. The location of her father’s final resting place has not been determined.

The Reds, for their part, had been preparing for this day since Rose’s death. The tarp covering the pitcher’s mound Sunday carried his No. 14. Visitation visitors were presented with a souvenir card that contained an excerpt from Rose’s 2016 induction speech for the Reds Hall of Fame:

“All the years I played, you motivated me because I was raised on the same water and the same food you guys were raised on. I know the traditions of Cincinnati baseball. I know how you want to win. I know how you want the players to play hard. You didn’t know, but every night I went out there, you motivated me to play hard, You motivated me to get base hits. And I just happened to have a bunch of great teammates who felt the same way about the game as I did,” Rose said that day.

“You never realized that all those years, you motivated me to play the way I did. I wasn’t diving for me. I was diving for you. I was hittin’ for you. I was trying to score runs for you.”

Those remarks, at best, were disingenuous. Pete Rose’s primary interest was always Pete Rose, and his selfish streak manifested itself in long-running, self-serving lies, chronic infidelity and a prison term for tax evasion.

Well-meaning friends who tried to lead him toward the “reconfigured” life recommended by former Commissioner Bart Giamatti were generally rebuffed or ignored. The keen risk management calculations Rose made on the playing field did not carry over to his personal life. The same player who had adapted and attained All-Star status at five different positions seemed powerless in the grip of a gambling addiction, unable to change his ways enough to make reinstatement a plausible possibility.

Yet for all of his flaws, Rose resonated with fans as have few other athletes, not only in his hometown of Cincinnati, and not because of his numbers so much as the palpable passion with which he played.

Alan Singler, a retired federal agent raised near Crosley Field, said he had heard Rose slid headfirst into heaven and the devil missed the tag.

“Like most Cincinnatians, he was a hard-working son of a gun,” he said. “Like all of us, he had his flaws. But if you got to know him, he was a genuine human being.

“The last time he was here, I came with my nephew to get his autograph. He was hobbling about. I said, ‘Pete, what’s wrong with you?’ He said, “Oh, I’ve got a bum knee.’ … I said, ‘Do you mind if I pray over you?’ He said, ‘Go ahead.’’’

Flora Hurst of Jacksonville, Florida, wore a shirt bearing a photograph of Rose because she was unable to find the jersey he had signed for her.

“I grew up loving him,” she said. “I was born in ’75. I have tons of ‘75 memorabilia: books, commemorative cups, lapel pins, tons of stuff. I can remember growing up, sitting on my grandfather’s lap and watching the Reds. I love Pete. I just have that nostalgia.”

Forty-one days since Rose died, numerous fans drove hundreds of miles and endured a downpour to pay tribute to this singular singles hitter.

“I just wish the rain would hold off,” John Bradford said, “but maybe these are tears from heaven.”

Rose was a baffling contradiction: Deeply flawed but, good Lord, he was a great ballplayer

A day after the Reds punched ticket for World Series, Pete Rose was at Keeneland