Longtime Pete Rose teammate Tony Perez said MLB’s hit king “wasn’t him at all” the day before he died Monday at the age of 83.
Perez, who played alongside Rose with the Reds for 16 seasons, saw his friend Sunday during an autographs show in Tennessee.
“It’s really hard when it happens,” Perez told TMZ Sports about Rose’s death. “We’re just sitting there on Sunday, having a time but not a good time because he was in a wheelchair and he wasn’t feeling that well. He didn’t even look too good. We can see he’s pale a little bit and he wasn’t him at all. He wasn’t the guy I see the last time I see him before Sunday.
“He wasn’t a talker, he didn’t say much. He said, ‘Hello,’ and that’s it but we didn’t go the way we used to go on each other and he used to see me and go … and say a lot of stuff and get on me, ‘You getting old, man. You ugly,’ or whatever. Dave Concepcion and (Ken) Griffey Sr. was there and George Foster from the Cincinnati Reds and really we don’t have that great time with him because of the way he looks and the way he reacts that day.”
Perez, a Hall of Famer who played with Rose on the Reds from 1964-76 and then from 1984-86, said he had last seen Rose six months prior to their Sunday appearance.
The two appeared alongside fellow “Big Red Machine” teammates from the 1975 and ’76 championship teams for the Music City Sports Collectables and Autograph Show in Franklin, Tenn.
Rose sat in a wheelchair for a photo of the five ex-teammates that the show shared on its Facebook page.
Perez said Rose was in much better health the last time he saw him.
“I know he had trouble with his health, he had trouble with his heart but he never go to the doctor and never take medicine. He don’t want to do it,” Rose said. “I guess he just think he was playing an extra-inning ball game … but it wasn’t that way and he didn’t help himself and that’s what happens.”
Rose died at his Las Vegas home of natural causes due to hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, according to Clark County coroner Melanie Rose.
He tallied an MLB record 4,256 hits in his career, which included 19 seasons with the Reds, although he is not in the Hall of Fame since he gambled on baseball.
“He was the guy who lead us. He lead us to everything,” said Perez, who played first and third base for the Reds. “You see him play and you have to play the way he plays. If you didn’t run that ball out or you not run the bases like you’re supposed to do, you’re going to look bad because Pete, he was a machine, he never stopped and he kept us going. You have to play hard like he does.”
He added: “Everybody knows Pete as a player but I know as a person he was a great guy, he was a great teammate, great person, one of my best friends and I love him. I love him.”