Life-altering: Being robbed at gunpoint five years ago during spring training changed Rose's life

[Louis Cypher]

Friday, July 1, 2005

By BILL PLUNKETT
The Orange County Register


LOS ANGELES--Mike Rose has spent plenty of time wondering why he had to go through the most terrifying experience of his life, one where "basically your life flashes before your eyes for two hours."

He seems satisfied with what could be an unsatisfying conclusion.

"It makes you stop and take a look at things, that's for sure," said the Dodgers' backup catcher this week. "You wonder - if everything happens for a reason, why did this happen to us? Am I doing the wrong thing? Was this trying to tell me something? Or was it just a freak thing?

"It was just bad luck. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Rose, 28, was one player among dozens of minor-leaguers from the Houston Astros' organization staying at a budget hotel in Kissimmee, Fla., during spring training in 2000. Five of them and one player's girlfriend had gathered to watch TV on the night of March 12 when two masked gunmen burst into the room.

Held at gunpoint, Rose and the others were tied up - hands and feet behind their backs with duct tape and plastic handcuffs - and covered with the hotel bedding while the men ransacked the room for valuables.

The robbers eventually left, looking for other targets. Rose noticed they had not let the door shut behind them and decided that they intended to return. Straining against their bindings, the players were able to break free, shut the door and lock it.

The gunmen had taken the players' cellphones - but left the hotel room phone untouched. Rose called 911.

Concerned about another friend, Aaron Miles, who had returned alone after dinner to his room next door, Rose called to warn him. One of the robbers answered.

Rose hung up and called the police again to tell them where the gunmen were. They arrived quickly and surrounded the hotel. One of the robbers jumped from the second floor and tried to escape. He injured his leg during the fall and didn't get far.

The other robber remained in Miles' room, holding him at gunpoint and telling police he would kill Miles and himself rather than surrender. At one point during the 30-minute standoff, Miles offered the gunman his Astros uniform to use as a disguise. The gunman rejected the idea, but Miles saw an opening when the gunman's attention turned to the window.

Miles grabbed the gun and fought with the robber. Miles called to police, who broke through the window. With Miles and the gunman still wrestling, police officers repeatedly told the robber to let go of the gun before shooting him multiple times.

Next door, all Rose heard were the sounds of a struggle, shouting and, finally, gunshots.

"I heard those shots, and I thought Aaron was dead," Rose said. "Then he came out of the room with the guy's blood all over him and a big chunk of skin taken out of his back (where the gunman had bitten Miles)."

The robber spent three weeks in a coma and emerged partially paralyzed. The next time Rose saw him was at the trial, which he and the other players attended. They learned that the gunmen had equipped themselves for the robbery at a nearby Wal-Mart and staked out the team hotel, waiting for a group of players to gather in one room.

Both robbers were sentenced to life in prison.

"I looked at him as they took him out of the courtroom and said, 'I hope you enjoy yourself,'" Rose said.

Rose already had examined his life by the time the trial ended. Within two weeks of the incident, he asked the Astros for his release - "I had to have some kind of change," he said.

That change did not involve giving up baseball. Rose said he spent the weeks afterward taking stock of his life and looking at it with a new perspective - one that did not diminish the importance of baseball in his life but recognized it.

"I knew I wanted to play baseball," he said. "I had to step back and look at my life. You think about what's important in your life. It was a huge wake-up call for me.

"It really set me free, gave me options. The lessons I learned from it are something nobody can understand if they haven't been through it. ... Before, I thought it (baseball) was a life-or-death situation, and obviously it wasn't. I can look at it (making the majors) as just reaching my goal. At the same time, there's no happier time for me than when I'm at the ballpark. I dedicated myself to baseball."

Rose signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks for the 2000 season and renewed a baseball odyssey that has taken him through six organizations - the Astros, Diamondbacks, Kansas City Royals, Boston Red Sox, Oakland Athletics and Dodgers - and multiple minor-league stops in 11 professional seasons.

His experience in March 2000 has made Rose a more cautious individual. He always locks his hotel room on the road, never opens it without checking the peephole and finds himself on guard when he is in public places.

"I notice everything," he said. "I'll be eating dinner somewhere and - without even thinking about it - I'll hear the conversations at other tables. If I walk out of a store, I'll be thinking, 'Is that guy following me?' I'm constantly aware of my surroundings.

"I honestly think it's helped me in baseball. Me being a catcher, my attention to detail is greater."

Rose said he and Miles became closer friends after the incident and helped each other work through things. Miles has said the experience "just faded away" for him. Rose said he saw a counselor a few times to help him deal with nightmares he had afterward.

Those have passed, and Rose said he has put it behind him. He is reluctant to discuss the incident since an ESPN report last year that he didn't like. New to the Dodgers' organization this spring, Rose said he told a few teammates about his experience.

"They said it sounded like a movie," Rose said. "And I guess it does."

This story has a happy ending. Four of the players have made it to the major leagues - Miles is in Colorado now, Morgan Ensberg in Houston, Keith Ginter in Houston, Milwaukee and Oakland and now Rose. He was the last to get there, appearing in two games for the A's in September and now with the Dodgers since Paul Bako's season-ending knee injury.

"Crazy. I guess that's just a coincidence," Rose said, aware of the odds against four of six minor-leaguers from any random sampling making it to the majors.

"At that time, I would never have thought four of us would all make it to the big leagues. I guess that's a big payback for us. We paid five years of dues in one day."

[LowKey]

Good article.

I was robbed two different times at gunpoint in 1975 when I briefly worked as self-service gas station cashier. I was nearly clubbed to death when I was mugged and robbed in Las Vegas in 1987. I was robbed and mugged 4 different times in Tijuana. I've been in two car accidents where the car I was driving was totalled. When I was 8 years old, I was playing ball on a 15-foot high roof when I fell over backwards going for a ball, somersaulting before luckily landing on my feet on the concrete below. In 1998, when I was visiting my dad here in Horseshoe Bay, while swimming in Lake LBJ, I was hit in the head by the bottom of a Jet Ski going full speed. I was briefly knocked unconscious, but came to just in time to make it to the surface of the lake before drowning.