Pete Rose, who died Monday at age 83, might have signed more autographs than any athlete who ever lived.
While Rose's legacy in the sport of baseball is incredibly complicated, his impact on the memorabilia world was nearly as complex.
Whether camped in a shopping mall at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas or parked a few blocks from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, Rose spent his post-baseball life signing collectibles ... and signing ... and signing.
From baseballs to bats to photos, Rose signed it all.
One of Rose's final public appearances even came at an autograph show over the weekend in Franklin, Tennessee, where he signed items alongside former Big Red Machine teammates Tony Perez, Ken Griffey Sr., Dave Concepcion and George Foster. For 90 minutes, Rose sat with pens in hand, looking up at the throngs of people, signing his name and visiting with his fans.
"No one loved baseball more than Pete," said Ryan Fiterman, his autograph agent for more than a decade, "and out of the hundreds of athletes I've managed, no one interacted with his fans like he did. If he saw a kid who was a baseball player, he'd try to inspire him as much as he could in the short time he had with him, not the other way around."
For a few extra bucks, baseball's all-time hit leader would write creative messages on balls such as "Hits 4,256, Steroids 0," and "I'm sorry I bet on baseball," the latter he bluntly admitted in an interview with cllct at this year's National Sports Collectors Convention that he didn't particularly love signing.
"I hate that inscription," Rose said in July. "Because it was a mistake. I wish I hadn't done it. It cost me $200 million. But if that's what they want, that's what they get."
When he was banned from baseball for gambling in 1989, "Charlie Hustle" began hustling his signature to fans.
In fact, it started the day Rose was banned from the game by commissioner Bart Giamatti. Literally.
On Aug. 23, 1989, Pete Rose flew to Minneapolis to honor a commitment to sell autographed collectibles.
As part of his contract with memorabilia company Scoreboard Inc., Rose was scheduled to appear on the shopping channel, the Cable Value Network (CVN), for two straight nights to sell autographs.
Ads had been taken out in the Cincinnati and Philadelphia newspapers, so interested fans would know Rose was selling his own items from 11 p.m. ET to 1 a.m. on the first night and 9 p.m. ET to 11 p.m. on night two.
Unbeknownst to the CVN executives, and a 23-year-old kid named Ken Goldin, who was Scoreboard's only executive in town, Rose had been told earlier that day he had been banned from baseball.
When news broke, Rose, CVN execs and Goldin were out to dinner at a restaurant on Lake Minnetonka.
"It was mayhem," said Goldin, now the founder and CEO of auction company Goldin Auctions, which he sold to Collectors and most recently eBay. "All hell broke loose."
But Rose approached the appearance with the same focus and drive he displayed in the batter's box for an MLB-record 3,562 games.
Intent on selling the 500 some baseballs and 200 bats he had signed and agreed to sell, he went on the air that night. At some point in the first hour, Goldin said, a producer for "Nightline" called CVN and asked if ABC could take in the CVN feed live, with anchor Ted Koppel showing shots of Rose selling amidst his downfall.
"I guess their point was to show how sad it was," Goldin said.
Instead, ABC wound up giving the shopping channel the greatest ad in its history.
Immediately, the phone lines lit up.
Some wanted to talk to Rose, and he was willing. At one point, there were 300 people on hold.
More wanted their Pete Rose items, and they wanted them now.
There were signed baseballs for $39.94 and the Rose Hit No. 4192 plaque for $79.92. There was just one problem: Rose hadn't signed enough for the unprecedented demand.
"We told Pete what was happening, and I remember him saying to me, 'Sell as much as you can,' Goldin recalled. "And so we kept selling, and when he got back to Cincinnati, he was signing for weeks."
If there is a face associated with the rise of the autograph industry, it is Rose.
As the hobby matured in the late 1980s, Rose was the star. In 1987, Rose got paid north of $5,000 a show to sign autographs at a then outrageous $10 apiece. Only Mickey Mantle made more.
From 2005 to 2010, a company called Field of Dreams paid Rose to sit in its memorabilia store at Caesar's Palace for 15 to 20 days a month for years, so anyone who walked in could get an autograph and be regaled with a story.
From 2011 until at least 2018, the same owners — who saw him sign up to 100 autographs a day at $75 each — paid him to sit at the Art of Music store in Mandalay Bay.
"He was the biggest draw at shows," Tri-Star's Jeff Rosenberg recalled. "He was taken around the country from San Francisco to Philadelphia to Kansas City, and people loved him."
That didn't seem to change much despite Rose being banned from baseball and kept out of the Baseball Hall of Fame for the last 35 years.
Rose signed and signed, claiming in that July interview he thought he had signed more than any athlete on earth. And yet still, fans continued to pay, and the demand hardly waned.
Sadly, with Monday's news, Rose will never sign a ball with the inscription he and his legion of fans so desperately wanted: "HOF."
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct.com and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectible market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.