“Yeah, I was in The Show. I was in The Show for 21 days once — the 21 greatest days of my life.” – Crash Davis
TUCSON — Mike Rose has played 1,140 games for 18 teams in 13 seasons. He has played for the Durham Bulls. He has traveled far and recurrently. Rose is a catcher. He is 6-feet-1, weighs 225 pounds and looks like he was carved from marble and talks like he could be a resident philosopher. He is only 85 shy of 1,000 minor-league hits.
Michael John-Ferrero Rose, 31, is the real-life Crash Davis.
“Nobody has ever called me that before, but I’ve seen the movie and know who Crash was,” Rose says, reluctantly accepting the comparison. This year is the 20th anniversary of the release of one of the all-time baseball movies. Kevin Costner portrayed a fictional aging minor-league catcher with the lowly Durham Bulls.
Mike’s facts are stranger than Crash’s fiction.
He has played 27 games in The Show.
“Baseball is what I do best, and I love the game more than anything,” Rose says. “I will not ever quit until I get a chance in the big leagues. I believe deep down in my heart that if a team will just take a chance on me, I will be a very good major-league player.”
At this very moment, Rose is the leading hitter — .400 — on the Rockies’ spring training roster.
Rose has been released, waived or granted free agency by Houston, Arizona, Boston, Tampa Bay (twice), Oakland, Kansas City, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Cleveland.
He has played in the Rookie League, Class A, AA and AAA, in14 states with teams nicknamed River Cats, Sidewinders, Diablos, Bison, 51s and River Bandits.
He has been injured often but has been placed on the disabled list only twice. He has ridden buses for 10 hours and slept in cheap hotels from Buffalo to Sacramento. He has warmed up at least 750 pitchers and driven in 456 runs. He has been a catcher in the cornfields, the wheat and the rye.
He has played as a visitor in Coors Field once — and went 0-for-4.
And, in spring training of 2000, Rose survived, with five other Houston Astros minor-league players, an armed robbery in their two motel rooms, during which they were tied up and their lives were threatened. Rose escaped his plastic binds and called police.
Four days later, Rose, a fifth-round draft choice by the Astros in 1995, asked for his release.
“I had to change my situation. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do in regard to baseball, but it was the right thing to do in my life,” he says.
Most made The Show
All six players were 23, 24 years old. Morgan Ensberg and Keith Ginter were called up by Houston later that season. Aaron Miles became the Rockies’ starting second baseman in 2004. Two of the players didn’t reach the majors. Rose finally made it to The Show in 2004 with Oakland, and appeared in two games.
He played 15 games with the Dodgers in 2005 and 10 with the Cardinals in 2006.
He possesses the positive attributes of a catcher — toughness, ruggedness, intelligence, a powerful arm — but the terrifying experience in Kissimmee, Fla., in March 2000 still has an evocative effect on him, and the others. “It made us all stronger and have a better appreciation for our lives and playing baseball,” says Rose, who, naturally, doesn’t seem comfortable discussing the event, which ended with Miles and one of the bandits fighting over a gun and police shooting the assailant six times, while Rose and the others (including a girlfriend) were taken away safely.
Rose immediately jumped back into the game in 2000, signing with Arizona. But he occasionally sought counseling because of the haunting memories, which Ensberg has told me don’t fade. Rose routinely checks his motel room lock.
In the past few years he has bounced about, struggling to hit but gaining a reputation as a solid handler of pitchers. He was labeled a career minor leaguer.
“It’s been frustrating at times. But I’ve never considered giving up. They’re going to have to kick me out of baseball, because I’ll keep coming back. My day will come.”
Finally, to Durham
After 10 years in the minors, Rose pinch hit for the A’s on Oct. 1, 2004. He struck out. The next year his contract was purchased by the Dodgers, where he got two brief promotions. He hit his first major-league home run on the last day of the season.
Rose, no relation to the famous/infamous ballplayer, was off two years ago to the Durham Bulls — the home of Crash Davis — then rudely released . . . again.
A year ago he toiled for Buffalo, then signed with Colorado in the off-season.In all probability, Rose will be spending his 14th consecutive Easter getting ready for a minor-league season. Don Quixote tilted at windmills. Rose forever squats behind the plate.
Teams need a bunch of catchers in the spring, so roses and thorns who can catch are in demand. Some team always wants Rose.
Ultimately, Rose says, he will be a major-league manager. “That’s my ultimate goal. There have been a lot of great managers who were catchers.”
And didn’t play much in the majors.
“But I’m going to play at least six, seven more years — I can play at 39, 40 — and prove that I belong in the big leagues. I hope this is the right place and the right time.”
To baseball, Rose is the archetypal journeyman. To his own self, Rose is a man on a pilgrimage to The Show.
Woody Paige: 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com
