Tony Perez, Pete Rose's longtime teammate, said the day before he died Monday at age 83 that MLB's hitting king “wasn't him at all.”
Perez, who played 16 seasons with Rose for the Reds, met Rose's friend Sunday at an autograph session in Tennessee.
“If that happens, it will be really difficult.” Perez told TMZ Sports. About Rose's death. “We just sit there and spend time on Sunday, but he wasn't having a good time because he was in a wheelchair and wasn't feeling that well. He didn't look very well either. I could see he looked a little pale, but he wasn't him at all. He wasn't the guy he was the last time I saw him.
“He wasn't very talkative and didn't say much. He said, 'Hello,' and that was that, but we didn't get along with each other like we used to, and he left me alone.” He looked at it and left…and said a bunch of things to me like, “You're old, man. You're ugly,'' or whatever. Dave Concepcion and (Ken) Griffey Sr. and George of the Cincinnati Reds. Foster was there too, but we didn't have as much fun with him because of his appearance and reactions that day.
Perez, a Hall of Famer who played with Rose for the Reds from 1964 to 1976 and then from 1984 to 1986, said he last saw Rose six months before Sunday's game. Ta.
The two appeared at the Music City Sports Collectibles & Autograph Show in Franklin, Tennessee, along with their Big Red Machine teammates from the 1975 and 1976 championship teams.
Rose sat in a wheelchair and posed for a photo of five former teammates that the program shared on its Facebook page.
Perez said Rose was in much better health the last time he saw her.
“I know he had health and heart issues, but he never went to the doctor and never took his medication. He didn't want to do that,” Rose said. “I think he just thinks he's playing an overtime ball game…but he wasn't and he didn't help himself and that's what happened.”
Clark County Coroner Melanie Rose said Rose died of natural causes due to high blood pressure and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease at her home in Las Vegas.
He had an MLB record 4,256 hits in a career that included 19 seasons with the Reds, but was not inducted into the Hall of Fame because of his baseball gambling.
“He was the guy that led us. He led us through everything,” said Perez, who played first and third base for the Reds. “When you watch him play, you have to play like he plays. If you don't get that ball out, if you don't run the bases the way you should, you're going to look bad. , because Pete was a machine and never stopped and kept us going. We have to play as hard as he did.”
He added: “We all know Pete as a player, but as a person we know he was a great guy. He was a great teammate, a great human being and one of my best friends. He is alone and I love him,” she added. i love him. “
