NEW YORK – Pete Rose, baseball’s career hits leader and fallen idol who destroyed historical achievements and Hall of Fame dreams by gambling on the game he loved and never realized, has died. He is 83 years old.
Stephanie Wheatley, a spokeswoman for Clark County in Nevada, confirmed on behalf of the medical examiner that Rose died Monday. Rose was found by a family member. The coroner will investigate to determine the cause and manner of death, but there are no signs of foul play, according to ABC News. Over the weekend, Rose appeared at an autograph event in Nashville with former teammates Tony Perez, George Foster and Dave Concepcion.
For fans who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, no player was more exciting than the Cincinnati Reds’ No. At the dawn of the artificial surface, divisional play and free agency, Rose old school, conscious throwback to the early days of baseball. Millions can’t forget him crouched and scowling at the plate, running fast for the first time even after signing a walk or sprinting for the next base and diving headfirst into the bag.
Major League Baseball, which fired him in 1989, issued a brief statement expressing its condolences and praising his “greatness, grit and determination on the field.” Reds principal owner and managing partner Bob Castellini said in a statement that Rose was “one of the fiercest competitors in the game” and added: “We will never forget what he has done.”
A 17-time All-Star, switch-hitting Rose played in three World Series championships. He was the National League MVP in 1973 and the World Series MVP two years later. He holds the major league records for games played (3,562) and plate appearances (15,890) and the NL record for longest hitting streak (44). He was the leadoff hitter for one of baseball’s most formidable lineups with the Reds’ championship teams of 1975 and 1976, with teammates including Hall of Famers Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Joe Morgan.
“My heart is broken,” Bench said in a statement. “I love you Peter Edward. You make all of us better. No matter what life we ​​lead. Nothing can replace you.”
In a post on social media Monday night, the Reds said they were “saddened” to learn of Rose’s death.
The Reds are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of baseball legend Pete Rose. pic.twitter.com/zOlU9NreWR
– Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) September 30, 2024
But no milestone came close to his 4,256 hits, shattering Ty Cobb’s 4,191 and showing his excellence regardless of the notoriety he achieved. It’s a very incredible total that can average 200 hits for 20 years and still come up short. Rose’s secret is consistency and longevity. Over 24 seasons, all but six of which he played with the Reds, Rose had 200 hits or more 10 times, and more than 180 another four times. He batted .303 overall, even when switching from second base to the outfield to third for first, and led the league in hits seven times.
“Every summer, three things happen,” Rose likes to say. “The grass will be greener, the weather will be warmer and Pete Rose will have 200 hits and bat .300.”
Rose reached 1,000 hits 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 3,772, in 1982. The 4,000th hit went to the Phillies’ Jerry Koosman in 1984, exactly 21 years after his first hit. He arrested Cobb on September 8, 1985 and executed him three days later, in Cincinnati, with his mother Rose and his young son, Pete Jr., among those present.
Rose is 44 and the team’s player manager. Batting left-handed against the San Diego Padres’ Eric Show in the first inning, he smacked a 2-1 slider into left field, a clean single. The 47,000-plus crowd stood and shouted. The game was stopped to celebrate. Rose was handed the ball and first base bag, then wept openly on the shoulder of first base coach and former teammate, Tommy Helms. He told Pete Jr., who would later play briefly for the Reds: “I love you, and I hope you get through me.”
He thought of his late father, a star athlete who had pushed him to exercise since childhood. And he thought of Cobb, the football-era slasher Rose emulated, so he named his son Tyler.
Baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, watching from New York, declared that Rose had “given him an important place in Cooperstown.” After the game, a 2-0 win for the Reds in which Rose scored both goals, he received a call from President Ronald Reagan.
“Your reputation and your legacy are safe,” Reagan said. “It will be a long time before anyone stands where you stand now.”
Four years later, he was gone.
On March 20, 1989, Ueberroth (who would be replaced by A. Bartlett Giamatti) announced that his office was conducting a “thorough investigation into the serious allegations” against Rose. Reports emerged that he had relied on a network of bookies, friends and others in the gambling world to bet on baseball games, including some with the Reds.
Rose denied wrongdoing, but the investigation found that “the accumulation of witness testimony, together with documentary evidence and phone records revealed extensive betting activities by Pete Rose in connection with professional baseball and, in particular, Cincinnati Reds games, during 1985, in 1985. 1986, and 1987 baseball season.”
Betting on baseball has been a cardinal sin since 1920, when several members of the Chicago White Sox were kicked out for throwing the 1919 World Series – to the Cincinnati Reds. In the next decade, Dodgers manager Leo Durocher and Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain were among those suspended for gambling, and Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle were reprimanded for being associated with casinos, although both had retired the year before.
In August 1989, at a New York press conference, Giamatti uttered some of the saddest words in baseball history: “One of the greatest players in the game has committed a series of actions that have ruined the game, and he must now live with the consequences. of that action.” Giamatti announced that Rose had agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball, a decision that in 1991 the Hall of Fame would rule him ineligible for induction. Rose tried to downplay the news, insisting that he had never played baseball and would eventually be reinstated.
Rose’s story eventually changed when he admitted in his 2004 autobiography that he bet on baseball, including Reds games, although he said he never bet on the team.
“I don’t think betting is morally wrong. I don’t even think betting on baseball is morally wrong,” Rose wrote in “Play Hungry,” a memoir released in 2019. “There are legal ways, and there are illegal ways. , and betting on baseball like I did against the rules of baseball.”
Despite winning the bet, Rose was never accepted into the Hall during his life, although he received 41 votes in 1992 (when 323 votes were needed), when the Hall officially ruled that those who were banned from the game would not be able to. elected. Her status remains a matter of debate to this day, with former President Donald Trump calling for Rose’s posthumous induction.
“The GREAT Pete Rose just passed away,” Trump posted on social media Monday night. “He was one of the best baseball players in the game. He paid the price! Major League Baseball should have let him go into the Hall of Fame years ago. Do it now, before the funeral! DJT”
Shortly after the ban was imposed, Rose was convicted of tax evasion and spent months in prison. Additionally, in 2017, an unidentified woman stated in court documents that Rose had a sexual relationship with her for several years in the 1970s, starting before she was 16. Rose admitted that she had a sexual relationship with the woman, but he believed they were having sex. it started when she turned 16 – which is the legal age of consent in Ohio.
Rose was a Cincinnati native from a working-class neighborhood whose father, Harry Francis Rose, like Mantle’s father, taught his son to be a hitter. Rose mastered her skills with a broom handle and a rubber ball, throwing it at her brother, Dave.
Pete Rose graduated from high school in June 1960. He flew to Rochester, New York, two days later, and then took a bus some 45 miles to Geneva, home of the Reds’ D level minor league team. By 1962, he had been promoted to level A, in Macon, Georgia. He batted .330 and vowed to replace Reds second baseman Don Blasingame in 1963, telling reporters, “I’m going to be on the heels.”
Blasinggame with the Washington Senators by midseason and Rose was a phenomenon: “Charlie Hustle,” Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford reportedly called him, mockingly, after watching him rush for the first time in the drawing mate in spring training. Rose hit .273 as a rookie and, starting in 1965, batted .300 or better in 14 of 15 seasons. He was so reliable that in 1968, the “Year of the Pitcher,” he led the league with a .335 average, one of three batting titles.
In his post-baseball life, he made several honorary associations. The Reds elected him to the team’s Hall of Fame in 2016, the year before a bronze statue of Rose’s iconic slide was unveiled outside Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park.
Rose was never enshrined in Cooperstown, but his career was well represented. Items in the Baseball Hall of Fame include a helmet from his 1973 MVP season, the bat he used in 1978 when he hit 44 and the cleats he wore in 1985, when he became the game’s leading hitter.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
