Pete Rose, baseball’s banned hits leader, has died at age 83

NEW YORK (AP) — 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 Monday. Wheatley said his cause and manner of death had 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,” the brash superstar.

A 17-time All-Star, the switch-hitting Rose played on three World Series winners. Rose 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).

Rose was the leadoff man for one of baseball’s most formidable lineups with the Reds’ championship teams of 1975 and 1976, with teammates that included Hall of Famers Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Joe Morgan.

Related: Kris Kristofferson, singer-songwriter and actor, dies at 88

But no milestone approached his 4,256 hits. It broke his hero Ty Cobb’s 4,191 record and signifying his excellence no matter the notoriety which followed.

It was a total so extraordinary that you could average 200 hits for 20 years and still come up short.

Rose’s secret was consistency, and longevity. Over 24 seasons, 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. He led the league in hits seven times.

“Every summer, three things are going to happen,” Rose liked to say. “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.”

‘A lifetime ban’ from baseball

On March 20, 1989, Peter Ueberroth (who would soon be succeeded by A. Bartlett 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. That included 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. Several members of the Chicago White Sox were expelled for throwing the 1919 World Series — to the Cincinnati Reds.

Baseball’s Rule 21 is posted in every professional clubhouse. It 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.”

In August 1989, at a New York press conference, Giamatti spoke some of the saddest words in baseball history.

“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 announced that Rose had agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball. That decision left him ineligible for induction in the 1991 Hall of Fame. Rose attempted to downplay the news. He insisted that he had never bet on baseball and that he would eventually be reinstated.

Within weeks of his announcement, Giamatti died from a heart attack. But the ban remained in place. 

A shifting narrative

Rose never made it to the Hall in his lifetime. However, he did receive 41 votes in 1992 (when 323 votes were needed). That was around the time the Hall formally ruled that those banned from the game could never be elected. His status was long debated. 

Meanwhile, his story changed. In a November 1989 memoir, written with “The Boys of Summer” author Roger Kahn, Rose again claimed innocence, only to reverse himself 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. 

“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.”

Related: Fans fill stands at Smith’s Ballpark for final Salt Lake Bees home game

His disgrace was all the harder because no one seemed to live for baseball more than Rose did. 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.

In his post-baseball life, he did make it to a few honorary associations. The Reds voted him into the team’s Hall of Fame in 2016,. That was the year before a bronze sculpture of Rose’s iconic slide was unveiled outside of Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park.

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.