Pete Rose, baseball’s career hits leader and fallen idol who undermined his historic achievements and Hall of Fame dreams by betting on the game he loved and once embodied, has died. He was 83 years old.
Stephanie Wheatley, spokeswoman for Clark County, Nevada, confirmed on behalf of the medical examiner that Rose died Monday. Wheatley said the cause of death has not yet been determined.
For fans who came of age in the 1960s and ’70s, no player was more exciting than the Cincinnati Reds’ No. 14. “Charlie Hustle” was a brash superstar with shaggy hair, a chubby nose and muscular forearms. Rose was old school, a conscious throwback to the early days of baseball. He would crouch and frown at the plate, sprinting toward first even after drawing a walk.
Rose, a switch-hitting 17-time All-Star, played in three World Series-winning games. He was the National League Most Valuable Player in 1973 and the World Series Most Valuable Player two years later. He holds the record for major league games played (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890) and the National League record for longest hitting streak (44).
Related: Charlie Hustle: Pete Rose’s definitive book that deconstructs a disgraced legend
But no milestone came close to his 4,256 hits, surpassing his hero Ty Cobb’s 4,191 and proving his excellence regardless of the notoriety that followed. Rose’s secret was consistency and longevity. Over 24 seasons, all but six of which played entirely with the Reds, Rose had 200 hits or more on 10 occasions and more than 180 on four other occasions. He hit .303 overall, even while switching from second base to the outfield, from third to first, and led the league in hits seven times.
“Every summer, three things will happen,” Rose said: “the grass will turn green, the weather will get warm and Pete Rose will get 200 hits and hit .300.”
He caught up to Cobb on September 8, 1985, and overtook him three days later, in Cincinnati, with Rose’s mother and teenage son, Pete Jr, in attendance.
Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth declared that Rose had “reserved a prominent place in Cooperstown.” After the game, a 2-0 Reds victory in which Rose scored both runs, he received a phone call from President Ronald Reagan.
“Your reputation and your legacy are safe,” Reagan told him. “It will be a long time before anyone is where you are now.”
Four years later, he was gone. In March 1989, Ueberroth, who would soon be succeeded by Bart Giamatti, announced that his office was conducting a “full investigation into serious allegations” about Rose. Reports emerged that he had been relying on a network of bookmakers, friends and others in the gambling world to place bets on baseball games, including some with the Reds. Rose denied any wrongdoing, but the investigation found that “the cumulative testimony of witnesses, along with documentary evidence and telephone records, reveals extensive betting activity by Pete Rose in connection with professional baseball and, in particular, , Cincinnati Reds games, during the 1985 games, 1986 and 1987 baseball seasons.”
Betting on baseball had been a cardinal sin since 1920, when several members of the Chicago White Sox were expelled for losing the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Baseball Rule 21, published in all professional clubs, proclaims that “Any player, umpire, club or league official or employee who bets any sum on any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to make will be declared permanently ineligible.” ”
As early as the 1970s, teammates worried about Rose. By all indications, he never bet against his own team, but even betting on the Reds left him open to blackmail and raised questions about whether his baseball decisions were based on his own financial interests.
In August 1989, at a press conference in New York, Giamatti announced that Rose had accepted a lifetime ban from baseball, a decision that in 1991 the Hall of Fame would rule made him ineligible for induction. Rose attempted to downplay the news, insisting that he had never bet on baseball and would eventually be reinstated.
But the ban remained in effect and Rose never reached the Hall during his lifetime. Its status was long debated. Rose supporters, including Donald Trump, who in 2015, a year before he was elected president, tweeted: “I can’t believe Major League Baseball snubbed @PeteRose_14 for the Hall of Fame. He has paid the price. How ridiculous: let him in!
Meanwhile, Rose’s story changed. In a November 1989 memoir, Rose again claimed his innocence, only to change course in 2004. He desperately wanted to return and effectively destroyed his chances. He would continue to spend time at casinos, insisting that he was there to promote himself, not to gamble. He believed he had “messed up” and that his father would have been embarrassed, but he still bet on baseball, albeit legally.
“I don’t think gambling is morally wrong. “I don’t even think betting on baseball is morally wrong,” he wrote in Play Hungry, a memoir published in 2019. “There are legal ways and there are illegal ways, and betting on baseball like I did was against the rules. of baseball.”
His misfortune was even harder because no one seemed to live more for baseball than Rose. He remembered details of games long ago and could cite the most obscure statistics about players on other teams. He was as relentless in spring training as he was in the postseason, when He feuded with Buddy Harrelson of the New York Mets. during the 1973 National League playoffs.
Rose, the man, was never inducted into Cooperstown, but his career was well represented. Items in the Baseball Hall include his helmet from his 1973 MVP season, the bat he used in 1978 when his hitting streak reached 44 and the shoes he wore in 1985, the day he became the king of the game’s hits.