Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s controversial all-time hits leader whose accomplishments on the diamond were overshadowed by a lifetime ban for gambling on the sport, has died. He was 83 years old.
Stephanie Wheatley, a spokesperson for Clark County in Nevada, confirmed to the Associated Press on behalf of the medical examiner that Rose died Monday. The spokesperson said Rose’s cause and manner of death had not yet been determined.
Sources close to Rose told the Daily News that he had been suffering from serious heart issues in recent years. Despite his health problems, he continued to attend autograph sessions around the country, including in Nashville over the weekend.
The switch-hitting Rose, nicknamed “Charlie Hustle” for his fiery intensity on the field, enjoyed a 24-year career from 1963 to 1986. He played on three World Series-winning teams, was the National League MVP in 1973 and won World Series MVP two years later with the Reds.
Rose 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). He was a star with the 1975 and 1976 championship Reds team along with other MLB legends: Hall of Famers Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Joe Morgan. Rose was the leadoff man on those championship teams, hitting ahead of some of the best players the league had ever seen.
No milestone approached his 4,256 hits, breaking his hero Ty Cobb’s 4,191 due in large part to his 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.
He earned 17 All-Star selections his 24 years in the majors. He played 19 seasons with the Cincinnati Reds, five with the Philadelphia Phillies and one with the Montreal Expos.
Rose won Rookie of the Year in 1963, but he started off 0-for-12 with three walks and a hit by pitch before getting his first major-league hit, an eighth-inning triple off Pittsburgh’s Bob Friend. It came in Cincinnati on April 13, 1963, the day before Rose’s 22nd birthday. He reached 1,000 in 1968, 2,000 just five years later and 3,000 just five years after that.
He moved into second place, ahead of Hank Aaron, with hit No. 3,772, in 1982. No. 4,000 was off the Phillies’ Jerry Koosman in 1984, exactly 21 years to the day after his first hit. He caught up with Cobb on Sept. 8, 1985, and surpassed him three days later, in Cincinnati, with Rose’s mother and teenage son, Pete Jr., among those in attendance.
It occurred at the age of 44 as a player-manager with the Reds. He hit a single off San Diego Padres’ Eric Show in the first inning. The game was halted as Rose celebrated, receiving the first-base bag and record baseball as the crowd roared in excitement.
He told his son Pete Jr., who would later play briefly for the Reds: “I love you, and I hope you pass me.”
MLB commissioner Peter Ueberroth declared that Rose had “reserved a prominent spot in Cooperstown.” After the game, 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.”
But after reaching such lofty achievements, Rose’s legacy came crashing down.
On March 20, 1989, Ueberroth, who would soon be succeeded by Bartlett Giamatti, announced that his office was conducting a “full inquiry into serious allegations” about Rose. Reports emerged that Rose 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.”
In August of 1989, Rose was banned from baseball by Giamatti.
“One of the game’s greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts,” Giamatti said in a 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.
In 2016, the Reds voted him into the team’s Hall of Fame. The induction came a year before a bronze sculpture of Rose’s iconic slide was unveiled outside of Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park.
With News Wire Services
