Pete Rose, baseball great and fallen idol who undermined his historic achievements and Hall of Fame dreams by gambling on the game he loved and once embodied, has died. He was 83.
Stephanie Wheatley, a spokesperson for Clark County, Nevada, confirmed on behalf of the medical examiner that Rose died Monday. Wheatley said a cause of death has not yet been determined.
For fans who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, no player was more exciting than the Cincinnati Reds’ No. 14 pick. ‘Charlie Hustle’ was a brash superstar with shaggy hair, a grumpy nose and muscular forearms. Rose was old-fashioned, a conscious throwback to the early days of baseball. He crouched and frowned at the plate, and ran at full speed to first even after taking a walk.
The switch-hitting Rose, a 17-time All-Star, played against three World Series winners. He was the National League MVP in 1973 and the World Series MVP two years later. He holds the Major League record for games played (3,562) and at bats (15,890) and the NL record for longest hitting streak (44).
But no milestone approached his 4,256 hits, which surpassed his hero Ty Cobb’s 4,191 and signified his excellence regardless of the fame that followed. Rose’s secret was consistency and longevity. During all but six of the 24 seasons with the Reds, Rose had 200 hits or more 10 times, and over 180 four other times. He batted .303 overall, even when he switched from second base to the outfield to third to first, and he led the league in hits seven times.
“Every summer, three things will happen,” Rose once said: “The grass turns green, the weather turns hot, and Pete Rose gets 200 hits and a .300 bat.”
He overtook Cobb’s on September 8, 1985, at age 44, and surpassed him three days later, in Cincinnati, with Rose’s mother and teenage son, Pete Jr., among those in attendance.
Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth stated that Rose had “reserved a prominent spot in Cooperstown.” After the game, a 2-0 victory for the Reds, in which Rose scored both points, he received a call from President Ronald Reagan.
“Your reputation and legacy are safe,” Reagan told him. “It will be a long time before anyone stands where you are now.”
Four years later he was gone. In March 1989, Ueberroth, soon to be succeeded by Bart Giamatti, announced that his office was conducting a “full investigation into serious allegations” about Rose. Reports emerged that he relied on a network of bookmakers, friends and others in the gambling industry to place bets on baseball games, including some involving the Reds. Rose denied any wrongdoing, but the investigation found that the “accumulated testimony of witnesses, together with the evidence and telephone records, revealed extensive gambling activities by Pete Rose in connection with professional baseball and in particular the Cincinnati Reds games during the 1985 games bring to light. 1986 and 1987 Baseball Seasons.”
Betting on baseball has been a primal sin since 1920, when several members of the Chicago White Sox were expelled for throwing the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Baseball Rule 21, which is posted in every professional clubhouse, states that “any player, umpire, club, league official or employee who shall wager any amount on any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be permanently disqualified declared. .”
As early as the 1970s, teammates were concerned about Rose. By all accounts, he never gambled against his own team, but even betting on the Reds left him open to blackmail and raised questions about whether a decision was based on his own financial interest.
In August 1989, Giamatti announced at a press conference in New York that Rose had agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball, a decision that would be decided by the Hall of Fame in 1991, making him ineligible for induction. Rose tried to play down the news, insisting that he had never bet on baseball and that he would eventually be reinstated.
But the ban remained in place and Rose never reached the Hall during his lifetime. His status was long debated. Rose’s supporters, including Donald Trump, who tweeted in 2015, the year before he was elected president: “Can’t believe Major League Baseball just snubbed @PeteRose_14 from the Hall of Fame. He paid the price. So ridiculous – let him in!”
Meanwhile, his story changed. In a November 1989 memoir, Rose again claimed innocence, but in 2004 he reversed course. He was desperate to get back and effectively destroyed his chances. He continued to spend time in casinos, insisting he was there for promotion, not gambling. He believed he had “messed up” and that his father would have been ashamed, 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 released in 2019. “There are legal ways, and there are illegal ways, and betting on baseball the way I did was against the rules. of baseball.”
His shame was all the greater because no one seemed to live for baseball more than Rose. He remembered details of games long ago and could quote the most obscure statistics about players from other teams. He was as ruthless in spring training as he was in the postseason, when he feuded with Buddy Harrelson of the New York Mets during the 1973 NL 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 cleats he wore in 1985 on the day he became the game’s hits king.
