Pete Rose draws hundreds for Doylestown book signing

Reds and Phillies legend Pete Rose arrived in Doylestown late Thursday afternoon for the third of four stops on his book signing tour advertising his new memoir, “Play Hungry.” Doylestown Bookshop hosted the signing and held to its 6 p.m. door-opening, but that didn’t stop fans from congregating outside the shop’s doors as early as 5 p.m.

By the time the store allowed visitors to filter inside, the line had stretched down and around an entire Main Street block, where event staff offered wait-time information, bottled water, and even slices of pizza to those waiting in the shade of store awnings.

Within the shop, the snaking line of Phillies red and blue meandered from the storefront fiction section to the back children’s area. Rose, wearing an all-white Reds hat and turquoise t-shirt, sat and signed in front of a shelf full of “Play Hungry” copies and next to rows of greeting cards.

The attendance of about 600 people was far from a surprise, according to Krisy Elisii, the Senior Event Marketing Manager for Doylestown Bookshop. Most had already bought a copy of the book, but a smaller line of customers who made the purchase onsite formed near Rose’s corner.

“Based on the amount of pre-orders we took in, which was about 500, and then everyone heard him on the radio today and read it in the paper, we did expect [this turnout]," Elisii said. “We had Nick Foles here around this time last year, and it was very similar.”

When Rose made his way to his signing table around 6:30, ahead of the event’s scheduled seven o’clock start time, cheers and a smattering of applause filled the bookstore. Rose quickly warmed up to the crowd, posing for pictures and cracking jokes, especially with the children of parents who were meeting one of their all-time sports heroes.

Mike Beuke, who is a lifelong Reds fan originally from Cincinnati, met Rose with his wife, Lindsay, and their son, Oliver. When he saw Oliver’s baseball hat worn backwards on his head, Rose warned the nine year-old that he couldn’t play for the Yankees with a backwards cap, in reference to deceased Yankees owner George Steinbrenner’s famed dress code.

While most had only a brief moment with Rose until he had finished signing his book, one Doylestown resident had an extended interaction.

Rose made an exception to his book-only signing rule to autograph Carol Hara Upper’s 1960 photograph of Rose and his Geneva Redlegs teammates Dan Neville and Art Shamsky at Seneca Lake. Upper, who is from Geneva, N.Y., told Rose that the photograph was from 1958, but he corrected her, saying that he would have been in high school at the time.

“You know, all the girls welcomed all the boys for the summer,” Upper recalled. “[Rose] was so young and he was just starting along with everybody else.”

Nearly 60 years removed from his time in Geneva, Rose is accustomed to his signing event-centric lifestyle: he signs with his right hand and, for those who outstretch a hand, shakes with his left. Rose will move on to his next signing before returning home to Las Vegas, and Doylestown Bookshop will host its next book signing on June 13 with Patti Callahan Henry.