Pete Rose, baseball’s career hits leader 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 in Nevada, confirmed on behalf of the medical examiner that Rose died on Monday. Wheatley said a 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 puggish nose and muscular forearms. Rose was old school, a conscious throwback to baseball’s early days. He would crouch and scowl at the plate, running full speed to first even after drawing a walk.
A 17-time All-Star, the switch-hitting Rose played on three World Series winners. He was the National League MVP in 1973 and World Series MVP two years later. He holds the major league record for games played (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890) and the NL record for the longest hitting streak (44).
Related: Charlie Hustle: the definitive Pete Rose book that deconstructs a disgraced legend
But no milestone approached his 4,256 hits, breaking his hero Ty Cobb’s 4,191 and signifying his excellence no matter the notoriety which followed. Rose’s secret was consistency, and longevity. Over 24 seasons, all but six played entirely with the Reds, Rose had 200 hits or more 10 times, and more than 180 four other times. He batted .303 overall, even while switching from second base to outfield to third to first, and he led the league in hits seven times.
“Every summer, three things are going to happen,” Rose said, “the grass is going to get green, the weather is going to get hot, and Pete Rose is going to get 200 hits and bat .300.”
He caught up with Cobb’s on 8 September 1985, 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 declared that Rose had “reserved a prominent spot in Cooperstown.” After the game, a 2-0 win for the Reds in which Rose scored both runs, he received a phone call from President Ronald Reagan.
“Your reputation and legacy are secure,” Reagan told him. “It will be a long time before anyone is standing in the spot where you’re standing 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 inquiry into serious allegations” about Rose. Reports emerged that he had been relying on a network of bookies and 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 “accumulated testimony of witnesses, together with the documentary evidence and telephone records reveal extensive betting activity by Pete Rose in connection with professional baseball and, in particular, Cincinnati Reds games, during the 1985, 1986, and 1987 baseball seasons.”
Betting on baseball had 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’s Rule 21, posted in every professional clubhouse, proclaims that “Any player, umpire or club or league official or employee who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.’’
As far back as the 1970s, teammates had worried about Rose. By all accounts, he never bet against his own team, but even betting on the Reds left himself open to blackmail and raised questions about whether his baseball decisions were based on his own financial interest.
In August 1989, at a New York press conference, Giamatti announced that Rose had agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball, a decision that in 1991 the Hall of Fame would rule left him ineligible for induction. Rose attempted to downplay 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 made it to the Hall in his lifetime. His status was long debated. Rose’s supporters including Donald Trump, who in 2015, the year before he was elected President, tweeted: “Can’t believe Major League Baseball just rejected @PeteRose_14 for the Hall of Fame. He’s paid the price. So ridiculous — let him in!”
Meanwhile, Rose’s story changed. In a November 1989 memoir, Rose again claimed innocence, only to reverse course in 2004. He desperately wanted to come back, and effectively destroyed his chances. He would continue to spend time at 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 betting is morally wrong. I don’t even think betting on baseball if 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 disgrace was all the harder because no one seemed to live for baseball more than Rose. He remembered details of games from long ago and could quote the most obscure statistics about players from other teams. He was as relentless in spring training as he was in the postseason, when he brawled with the New York Mets’ Buddy Harrelson during the 1973 NL playoffs.
Rose the man was never inducted into Cooperstown, but his career was well represented. Items at the Baseball Hall include his helmet from his MVP 1973 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.