A Montana legend remembers Pete Rose. 

Several years ago, I was doing my statewide radio show from Las Vegas for a big convention. I was set up on radio row. My friend Bob Gilbert heard I was gonna be down there. He told me I needed to interview his friend Norm Clarke.

Norm Clarke is the Terry, Montana native who got his start in journalism right here in Montana. He eventually worked for the Rocky Mountain News before starting his very popular column in Las Vegas. He became known as “The Gossip King of Las Vegas.”

When Norm Clarke popped in to join me on radio row, one of the local guys said- “wow, that’s Norm Clarke!” Soon, everyone on radio row wanted to chat with Norm. One of the stories Norm told me back then was how he once got “bit*h slapped by Pete Rose.”

Norm shared the below writeup with us following the news of Pete Rose’s death. We are sharing it here with Norm’s permission.

A Pete Rose remembrance.

by Norm Clarke

Pete Rose R.I.P. I just heard the news, appropriately, from a friend in Cincinnati. I covered hundreds of Reds games during my AP years there (1973-79).

Had good times and rough times with him but the latter never changed my opinion of him: he was the fiercest competitor I covered in my 50-plus years as a journalist.
Wouldn’t trade those years I covered him and the Reds for anything.

Getting slapped by him in 2004 at N9NE steakhouse at the Palms didn’t change my ultimate opinion of him., either. He was an unapologetic force of nature.

In youth baseball, he kept getting cut. But he never stopped hustling.

The last time we talked, eight or nine years ago, we shook hands, as if to say we were putting the past behind us.

I have been asked hundreds of times if I thought he belonged in the Hall of Fame. As a baseball player, yes, but I qualified it by saying I thought he would go in posthumously. Not in his lifetime.

He threatened to punch me when I broke the story in 1976 that  he told his agent/attorney to tell the Reds management ”they can trade my ass to Philadelphia if they think I’m too rich for their blood.”

He denied my report for months, telling Cincinnati anchor Nick Clooney the story was  “Hogwash with a capital H-O-G-W” and said I wouldn’t “have the guts to show up at the ballpark”  the next day. When I confronted him at the batting cage the next day he threatened to “punch out my headlights.”

He told Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football I made it up.

Yes, he later apologized to me.

Signed with Philadelphia in a record free agent deal and helped them win the World Series.

Years later, after I left The AP to join the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, I broke story at the winter meetings that he was officially retiring from baseball. He denied that too, on ESPN, saying “that guy in Denver never got anything right.” Truth be told I loved Pete Rose, the player.

By the way, after he slapped me at the Palms, two guys immediately came up to my table: Palms owner George Maloof and Tom Brady. The latter wanted to meet Matt Drudge, who was our guest. In almost a whisper, I asked Maloof if he saw what just happened. No, he said. I replied, “Pete Rose just bitch slapped me.”

Brady, who was shaking hands with Drudge, turned to me, wide eyed. “Pete Rose just bitch slapped you!”

The next day I got a phone call from a former colleague at the Rocky Mountain News. Mark Wolf.

“Congratulations,” he said.

“For what?”

“For giving up Pete Rose’s last hit.”