Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader who earned a lifetime ban from the sport after he gambled on Cincinnati Reds games he managed, died Monday at 83, the Reds confirmed to USA TODAY Sports. No cause was given.
Rose, whose 4,256 hits are a record that will likely never be broken, was ushered from the game in shame after an exhaustive 1989 investigation determined that he’d placed wagers on the Reds through illegal bookmakers. Rose and Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti signed an agreement in which Rose agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball in return for the league not making a formal determination about whether or not he had bet on baseball.
Giamatti died on Sept. 1, 1989, just one week after Rose signed the agreement he crafted. Yet in the 33 years since, three successive commissioners – Fay Vincent, Bud Selig and Rob Manfred – have upheld the ban, and Rose remains ineligible for the Hall of Fame, to the chagrin of some of his fans.
That ban has taken on a whiff of hypocrisy in recent years as a 2018 Supreme Court decision opened the floodgates to gambling on sports, which is now legal in 38 states and the District of Columbia. MLB and other sports leagues have since embraced partnerships with both physical and online sports books, dismaying Rose supporters who saw their hero banished for betting.
Yet MLB and other sports leagues have held steadfastly to punishing players for betting on games in which they participate, as it did in banning infielder Tucupita Marcano for life and issuing one-year suspensions to four other players who the league determined bet on baseball.
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In his retirement, Rose lived in Las Vegas and continued profiting off his name and likeness, signing autographs and haunting baseball in the ways he could, such as staging autograph shows in conjunction with the July inductions of ballplayers at baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York; the most recent Hall of Fame weekend was one of the last times he was seen in public.
The deposed elder struck a significant contrast with the brash and scrappy player nicknamed Charlie Hustle, who barreled his way through a 24-year playing carer that took him to Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Montreal before finishing his final three seasons as a player in Cincinnati.
He broke Ty Cobb’s record of 4,191 hits with a single off San Diego Padres pitcher Eric Show on Sept. 11, 1985. By then, he’d been appointed player-manager – taking that post on Aug. 16, 1984 – before ending his playing career in 1986.
But the grim coda to his time in baseball came three years later, when as Reds manager an exhaustive investigation uncovered significant evidence that he’d gambled on baseball. He ultimately served five months in federal prison, in 1990-91, for tax evasion.
While Rose often professed his worthiness to return to baseball, his pleas were often measured against the 225-page Dowd Report, commissioned by Giamatti and executed by former Department of Justice attorney John Dowd.
The report contained alleged betting slips and interviews with Rose and other witnesses. Rose later admitted to betting on games he managed in his 2004 autobiography, ‘My Prison Without Bars.’
“’I’m sure that I’m supposed to act all sorry or sad or guilty now that I’ve accepted that I’ve done something wrong,” he writes. “But you see, I’m just not built that way. Sure, there’s probably some real emotion buried somewhere deep inside. And maybe I’d be a better person if I let that side of my personality come out.
“But it just doesn’t surface too often. So let’s leave it like this. … I’m sorry it happened, and I’m sorry for all the people, fans and family that it hurt. Let’s move on.”
Yet his life choices dogged him well into retirement. In 2017, a sworn statement from an unidentified woman alleged Rose had an inappropriate relationship with her in 1973, when she was 14. Rose acknowledged the relationship but claimed it began when the accuser was 16, the age of consent in Ohio.
In 2022, before a ceremony at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park to honor the 1980 champion Phillies, Rose brushed off inquiries about the specter of statutory rape, telling a female reporter, “It was 55 years ago, babe.” He also told reporters: ‘I’m going to tell you one more time: I’m here for the Philly fans, I’m here for my teammates, OK. I’m here for the Philly organization, and who cares what happened 50 years ago.’
Rose remains baseball’s career leader in games played (3,562), plate appearances (15,890), at-bats (14,053) and, of course, hits (4,256). He won three batting titles – batting a career-best .348 for the 1969 Reds – and had a career .303 average.
He was the cocky cog of the legendary Big Red Machine teams of the 1970s that advanced to four World Series and won championships in 1975 and ’76. He earned MVP honors in the ’75 Series, batting .370 and reaching base 16 times as the Reds won an epic seven-game battle with the Boston Red Sox.
Rose won one more championship in 1980 as part of the Philadelphia Phillies’ “Wheeze Kids,” his hair graying but his hitting ability remaining, as he smacked 42 doubles at age 39.
But he was a Red, above all, and a Cincinnati native and returned to his hometown club in an August 1984 trade that sent Tom Lawless to the Montreal Expos.
That marked the start of Rose’s stint as player-manager, a stretch highlighted by him becoming the Hit King, once and for all. His downfall would come three years later, his lifetime ban following him to death.
(This story was updated to add new information.)