I met Pete Rose a few times. Pete rented the carriage from lenord Tose,owner of the Eagles. The plumbing shop I did my apprenticeship did their work.

Thanks, Mike!

I remember clearly when he became a free agent and went to the Phillies!

After sixteen years with the Cincinnati Reds, Pete Rose signs a four-year, $3.2 million deal with the Phillies

https://thisdayinbaseball.com/after-sixteen-years-with-the-cincinnati-reds-pete-rose-signs-a-four-year-3-2-million-deal-with-the-phillies/

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https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rosepe01.shtml

I can top your story on this one.

Don Mattingly is from Evansville, IN where we live. 

I moved here in 1982 to be chief meteorologist on WEHT-TV.  There was 1 gym in town, the Pit Barbell Club. They were national power lifting champs and held some body building events in town(that I competed in and later, was  celebrity master of ceremonies for).

Right after Don was drafted he still worked out at the Pit in the off season for strength training. I used to bench press 345 lbs at one point and was about his size and remember thinking, "dang, I'm almost twice as strong as this guy and look where he is!"

He spent alot of time working his forearms and wrists to develop bat speed. 

Fast forward to July 1996.

 I'm retired from tv and a professional commodities trader and coaching all my sons sports teams. It's baseball tournament season and I'm the head coach for the 8 and under, Pinto travel team from our league, Scott Baseball.  We're playing in the Gulfmoor tournament against the team from Highland. The shortstop on the Highland team is Preston Mattingly, Don's son(graduated from Central HS, same year as Quinn 2006).

Don had to end his career after just 14 years at the age of 34 because he wore out his back and had degenerative arthritis.(He would definitely be in the Hall of Fame if not for that).

So he was at the game, sitting in a chair with his wife in back of  the left field fence. 

He's a huge Evansville celebrity of course and there's constant traffic surrounding him to get an autograph and meet him. As a tv celebrity myself  for 11 years, I'm thinking "he's here to watch his son play and is just tolerating all these people, I don't want to make it any worse, just because he probably knows me".

So late in the game after the crowd was gone, I decided to go over there. As I approached, Don says "Hey Mike, hows it going!"  We briefly talked about the Pit Barbell Club and he told me he built his own gym at his house in the basement (5 million dollar house on Darmstadt Road).

I ended up having several more encounters related to horse manure because of his wife's hobby. 

More on that in a short while.

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Don Mattingly

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mattido01.shtml

In the 1990's my wife and I had a property in the country on 5 acres that gave me the opportunity to do some gardening. I grew up in Detroit, where the houses were separated by a skinny driveway, just wide enough to park cars. Mom grew tomatoes in the small backyard growing up but that was the extent of my gardening experience growing up.

However, I'd always been fascinated by plants/agronomy and was now trading them for a living (crops that are traded in the futures market) and constantly tracking crop conditions. 

So I decided to buy a tiller and carve out a MASSIVE garden on the other side of the driveway.

I did soil testing to determine what needed to be added to the crappy clay soil to make it best for growing stuff.

A  problem with crappy clay soil is that it lacks tilth.  It was too heavy, didn't drain well and was really lacking in organic matter. 

Tilth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilth

As a scientist, I decided this would be a wonderful project to greatly improve my garden's tilth.

I initially added some spagnum peat moss for organic matter, sand to help with drainage and some top soil from the Wabash River bottoms but the biggest thing that I did was start a long term soil amendment using sawdust and horse manure from Wen-Mar Stables, which was a mile away.

I contacted the owner, Wendy to find out how I could get some of this good stuff. 

Turns out that they cleaned the stables M-F but not on weekends. So the Monday stuff was saturated with horse urine and lots of poop. That's the stuff I wanted.

Turns out that it was a JOB for them to load up a pick up truck with the nasty stuff, then dump it somewhere. I told them that I could come on Monday's and take care of the dumping myself. I did this for around 15 Monday's over the course of a year and had a huge pile next to my garden that was decomposing. 

Turns out that Don Mattingly's wife, Kim liked to ride horses and had a horse at their stable. Don ended up giving them a million $ to build a new stable that met her expectations. According to Wendy, the owner of the stable, Kim was the biggest B she ever met. Don and Kim ended up getting divorced. I don't know the story behind that but can imagine how bad she was considering some of the stories. 

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I mixed in a bunch of nitrogen/urea into the giant sawdust and manure/urine pile to help break down the sawdust(carbon). In the cold weather, the pile would have steam coming off of it from the heat of that process going on. The pile got smaller and smaller as it decomposed into rich, black organic matter.  Every year, I would till more of this into the garden, while also doing  soil tests (that I sent to Purdue U) to make sure nothing was getting too extreme(adding lime and other stuff, including micronutrients on a regular basis).

By the late 90's, the soil in my garden was black and looked like the dirt does in Iowa! I grew almost everything you can  grow in a garden at least 1 time. The main crops like corn, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, Kohlrabi, turnips and so on........I  intentionally had 3 times more than my wife and 3 kids could eat. I would put the extra in bags and deliver it to my wife's parents and siblings. 

Then, in late 1998 when my 5th grade son was getting ready to enter middle school, my wife decided she wanted to move to a different school district, where my sons friends were going to school.

 I tried for months to change her mind but it didn't work. So we moved to a place surrounded by mature trees. Plants need lots of sun, so I had a smaller garden for just over a decade that started having disease in the soil from too much shade.  I even got a few dozen massive pots, filled them with top soil, sand and spagnum peat moss and grew peppers and tomatoes on our black top drive way for a couple of years. The peppers loved the heat!

mm, those are great stories about one of my favorite players of all time. Mattingly was Mr Yankee before Jeter became Mr Yankee

Yes, mcfarm Don Mattingly was a special baseball player and top notch, class human being Loaded with character.

Lets not over look his elite defensive skills with 9 golden gloves in his short 14 seasons.

After the back injury, his power especially dropped off.

He‘s just barely missed the hall of fame. Maybe still an outside chance.

According to Wendy, at Wen-Mar stables, his ex wife Kim was an alcoholic monster. He never deserved that.

sorry...I failed to mention another great character guy and a great Mr Yankee before Mattingly and Jeter......the awesome Thurman Munson

Such a tragic early ending to Munson's career:

Thurman Munson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurman_Munson

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/munsoth01.shtml

Hurray!!!!

Pete Rose's reinstatement has baseball fans in uproar: 'What a shame they waited until now'

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/pete-roses-reinstatement-has-baseball-fans-uproar-what-shame-waited-until-now

inside me somewhere, despite what he did, I am glad he is reinstated and more than likely going to the hall.....there are likely worse people in the hall