Pete Rose, Major League Baseball‘s legendary all-time hits leader who was shunned by the Hall of Fame over a gambling scandal during his coaching career, died Monday in Las Vegas. He was 83.
During a live MLB postseason preview on ESPN, an emotional Eduardo Pérez broke into the banter to announce the news of Rose’s death. “My father called me, and I confirmed it with my brother Pete Rose Jr.: Pete Rose passed away today and, um, it’s hard. … It’s a big hit for a lot of baseball families so, it’s a tough one right now.”
Nicknamed “Charlie Hustle” for his tenacity and competitiveness on the diamond, ferocious baserunning and trademark headfirst slides, Rose had an unmatched 23-year career. He amassed an MLB-record 4,256 hits — or “knocks,” as he called them — and also playing in more games (3,562) than any other player. He also holds Major League records for singles (3,215), at-bats (14,053) and plate appearances (15,890).
A member of MLB’s All Century Team, Rose was a three-time batting champion and a seventeen-time All-Star, making squad at an MLB-record five positions — all three base and left and right field. He won three World Series titles — two back-to-back with the “Big Red Machine” Cincinnati Reds in 1975, when he was named Series MVP, and 1976 and another with the stacked 1980 Philadelphia Phillies. He also was the National League MVP in 1973 and Rookie of the Year a decade earlier.
His 44-game hitting streak in 1978 — at age 37 — is the third-longest in Major League history, seven behind Joe DiMaggio’s revered mark.
But Rose’s iconic career was tainted forever by a gambling scandal when he was managing the Reds in the late 1980s. Then-MLB Commissioner Peter Uberroth and NL President Bart Giamatti questioned him about reports that Rose bet on baseball games. Initially, he admitted to gambling on other sports but denied betting on baseball.
Giamatti later was named MLB commissioner and pressed the investigation. In 1987, the Dowd Report — named for attorney John Down, who led the probe — concluded that Rose had bet on more than 50 Reds games in 1987 and others during the prior two seasons. Despite continuing to deny the allegations, Rose agreed to be banished to MLB’s ineligible list. Despite pleas from fans, fellow players and others, he never was reinstated, leaving him out of the Baseball Hall of Fame despite being one of the sport’s all-time greatest hitters.
Earlier this year, HBO aired Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose, which takes stock of the fallen icon who continued to chug toward his goal of getting into the Hall of Fame and back in baseball’s good graces. His age and basic human sympathy argued for him, as do his singular stats. But he remained a polarizing figure.
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“Pete is most well-known for hitting a baseball,” Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose writer-director Mark Monroe told Deadline in June. “He’s the best hitter by the numbers that’s ever played the game. But the second thing he’s most known for is lying He [told] a lie about what happened with the gambling — and not just at the dinner table, but on Johnny Carson or to Charlie Rose or the Today show. He maintained that lie for more than a decade.”
In early 2020, President Donald Trump stumped publicly for Rose’s reinstatement and consideration for the Hall of Fame. “He gambled, but only on his own team winning, and paid a decades long price,” Trump posted on then-Twitter.” GET PETE ROSE INTO THE BASEBALL HALL OF FAME. It’s Time!”
Among Rose’s most famous — or notorious — MLB moments came in the 1970 All-Star Game, when Rose tried to score from second base on a single to centerfield. He steamrolled AL catcher Ray Fosse to plate the winning run. Fosse had severe shoulder injuries and was never the same player.
Rose’s on-field grit and singular drive often rubbed opponents the wrong way. During the 1973 NL Championship Series, Rose slid hard into New York Mets shortstop Bud Harrelson, sparking a bench-clearing brawl.
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Born on April 14, 1941, in Cincinnati, Rose was a switch-hitting terror at the plate in a famously hunched stance. He had his MLB debut for the Reds on April 8, 1963, and played his final game in 1986, having returned to his hometown club after five seasons with the Phillies and a portion of the 1984 season with the Montreal Expos.
He broke Ty Cobb’s revered all-time hits record on September 11, 1985, lined an opposite-field single from the left side of the plate against Eric Show of the San Diego Padres. As the crowd in Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium went nuts celebrating Rose’s 4,192nd base hit and he acknowledged them from first base, Show sat down on the mound with his arms folded. Playing right field for San Diego was Tony Gwynn, who would go on to become one of MLB’s handful of greatest batsmen.
The late Charlie Lau, the revered batting coach who penned several books on the art of hitting a baseball, admitted in a 1978 interview with the Washington Post that Rose was the model for his popular “slap-hitting” technique: stand deep in the batter’s box, far off the plate, feet together, bat held flat, deep crouch, weight on back foot, “charge the plate,” hit to the opposite field.
Rose went on to manage the Reds for six seasons from 1984-89, racking up a .525 win percentage in 786 games. He was in the 1985 NL Manager of the Year voting, losing to eventual World Series champion Whitey Herzog of the St, Louis Cardinals.
Glib and outspoken, Rose was a regular face on TV talk shows and documentaries. He appeared on talkers hosted by Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, Bill Maher, Conan O’Brien, Larry King, Seth Meyers, Howard Stern, Dennis Miller, Charlie Rose and others. He also did commercials.
Rose also had a handful of acting credits. He played Cobb — the irascible “Georgia Peach” whose hits mark he shattered — in the 1991 telefilm Babe Ruth, starring Stephen Lang as the Sultan of Swat. He also appeared as himself in episodes of TV’s Veronica’s Closet, Arli$$ and Good Sports during the 1990s.
Rose also starred in Pete Rose: Hits & Mrs., a reality series that aired one season on TLC in 2013, with the final two episodes on sibling cable net Destination America. It followed the ex-player and his Playboy model fiancée Kiana Kim and her two children.
“Pete is one of sport’s most controversial characters, and his life is even more fascinating off the field as it was on,” then-TLC general manager Amy Winter said of the show. “This series will open the door into a very modern family dynamic of trying to blend families when your kids are no longer children, and when your private life is in the public spotlight.”
Survivors include Kim, to whom Rose remained engaged until his death; his son Pete Rose Jr., a longtime minor ballplayer who had a brief MLB stint with the Reds in 1997; and daughter Cara, an actress who appeared on Melrose Place, Passions and other TV shows under the stage name Chea Courtney.
Rose was married to Karolyn Englehardt from 1964-80 and to Carol Woliung from 1984-2011.