All-time baseball hits leader Pete Rose slapped gossip columnist Norm Clarke in the face in a restaurant on Saturday, the Las Vegas Review Journal writer wrote in his newspaper, according to the New York Post.

Clarke wrote that Rose "slapped a stinging single to the right side of my face" at the N9NE Steak House at the Palms.

"I got up from the table to say hello. He walked up and (slapped me)," Clarke wrote. "You said I don't tip," Rose told Clarke. "You made me the No. 5 worst tipper."

Clarke has known Rose, who was banned from baseball in 1989 for allegedly gambling on baseball games, since Clarke began reporting on Cincinnati Reds games in 1973.

The columnist says that Rose lied to him repeatedly over the years about stories that later proved true.

"There were a lot of good times, and some tense times . . . it was always a love-hate thing," Clarke writes.

Clarke wrote that earlier in March, "Rose and I had a pleasant, hatchet-burying lunch at Smith & Wollensky's, our first sitdown since 1989," during which Clarke gave Rose a copy of his Loas Vegas guide book, "Vegas Confidential: 1,000 Naked Truths."

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