Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s hit king who was later banned from baseball entirely, died on Monday afternoon, the Cincinnati Reds announced.
He was 83.
Specifics surrounding Rose’s death are not yet known, though his death was confirmed by the Clark County, Nevada, medical examiner to ABC News.
Rose spent 24 years in Major League Baseball, and he retired as the league’s all-time hits leader, among other things. The Cincinnati native got his start with the Reds in 1963, and he spent the first 16 seasons of his career with the organization. He won a pair of World Series titles in 1975 and 1976, which marked the club’s first championships in 35 years.
Rose then spent a five-year run with the Philadelphia Phillies, and he won his third World Series title there in 1980. He then spent half of a season with the Montreal Expos in 1984 before returning to Cincinnati that year to wrap up his playing career.
Rose finished with 4,256 hits, which is the most in MLB history. He’s one of just two players, along with Ty Cobb, to even surpass the 4,000-hits mark. Rose also holds MLB records for games played (3,562), plate appearances (15,890) and at-bats (14,053). Rose won three batting titles and two Gold Glove awards throughout his career, and he picked up 17 All-Star nods. He was the league’s MVP in 1973, when he held a .338 batting average with 230 hits, five home runs and 64 RBI.
“I am the winningest athlete in team sport history,” Rose told the Cincinnati Enquirer in 2018. “To me, my biggest record is the number of winning games I played in. And that’s also a testament to all the great teammates I played with.”
Rose spent seven seasons as the Reds’ manager, including the final few seasons when he was still playing. He won two divisional titles while in that role and finished with a 412-373 overall record. Rose’s career ended in scandal, however, as he was banned from the sport for live in 1989 for gambling on games while he was the Reds’ manager — including on his own team’s games.
Shortly after Rose accepted a lifetime ban from then-commissioner Bart Giammatti, Rose was convicted of tax evasion and spent several months in prison. He admitted to betting on baseball in a 2004 book after long denying the allegations.
That lifetime ban, which has been debated constantly through the years as new commissioners took over the league, has kept him out of the Baseball Hall of Fame. He tried to be reinstated in 2015 in a final bid to make it in, but current commissioner Rob Manfred denied it. Gambling on games the way he did, Rose said, was his only regret.
“There’s only one thing I would change if I had to live it all over again … I would obviously turn my life around and not bet on baseball,” Rose told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Having said that, I feel like I’ve been a pretty good citizen.
“You never read about me being in a bar after hours, beating up my wife, or getting into a fight with a fan and I was as gracious to everyone as I could be.”