Pete Rose goes down in baseball history as a complicated, tragic, mythic figure. My personal memory of him goes back to November 1979 when all-stars from the American and National leagues were playing a series between each other and also with Japanese all-stars.

Down on the field in Tokyo’s beautiful Seibu Lions park, ringed by bushes and grass, I met a lot of the players, none quite so memorable as Mr. Rose. Sure, he’d chat. He was totally pleasant, fired up, glad to be in Japan. He was on edge, though, almost jittery, nervous, toying with a bat in between games of pepper, tapping balls tossed at him not by another player.

They were thrown by a young guy responsible for making sure the players knew where they were going — not on the field but to their bus and hotel. After 10 or 15 minutes of polite palaver, Rose was jumpy. Eager to keep on tapping the ball, he went back to pepper, a warm-up exercise that showed his zest for a game he played with full force, whether for real, in a regular season, or for fun, as in Japan.

So eager was Rose to please the fans that he put on a special, rather risky, display in the outfield of clasping his hands behind him in pursuit of a fly ball and then catching the ball behind his back. Okay, it was all in pre-game fun, a daring but needless act of acrobatics. The fans loved it, cheering each behind-the-back catch as though it were the greatest play of the game.

The Japanese could hardly believe  the ferocity with which Mr  Rose played.  Should he jeopardize his body — he was then 38 years old coming off his first season with the Phillies after 16 years at Cincinnati — for a meaningless game in Japan? Absolutely. With his usual wild abandon, he slid head first into bases, and he hustled in the outfield and first base as though the season were on the line.

The Japanese loved Rose still more for an even greater reason. He was showing them respect. He was telling them: I’m hustling for you as much as for the Americans. I’m playing the game as hard here as I do anywhere, I’m willing to put on the same show for you as for the fans back home. My meeting with Rose was, in retrospect, haunting — a glimmer into a guy whose glory turned to tragedy.