Pete Rose, Baseball Legend Marred by Gambling Scandal, Dies at 83

Pete Rose, regarded as one of the greatest players in Major League Baseball history but banned permanently from the Baseball Hall of Fame over gambling, died Monday. He was 83.

Nicknamed “Charlie Hustle,” a moniker originally meant as an insult that he adopted proudly, he was at the time of his death still the all-time MLB leader in hits with 4,256, games played with 3,562, at-bats with 14,053, singles with 3,215 and outs with 10,328. He also won the league’s Gold Glove award twice (in 1969 and 1970), and put in 17 All-Star appearances in five different positions, another league record.

The Cincinnati native, born April 14, 1941, showed talent in multiple sports, focusing on baseball when his small height and build kept him out of varsity football. He started playing minor league baseball while still in high school — he repeated his senior year — and was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in 1963, where he would go on to spend the majority of his career.

In free agency, Rose left the Reds to join the Philadelphia Phillies in 1978, staying with them until early in the 1983-84 season when he signed with the Montreal Expos. He returned to the Reds in 1984 as a player-manager. He continued in this role until his retirement as a player in 1986, and remained with the Reds as a manager.

His career would come to an abrupt end in 1989, when it first became known that Rose had violated one of professional baseball’s most serious rules — gambling on the sport while working in it.

MLB executives became aware of allegations about his gambling and questioned him early in the year, actions made public by Sports Illustrated that March. Just days later, a Cincinnati Enquirer exposé revealed that Rose had been investigated during the late 1970s for alleged gambling. By August, then-baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti (father of actor Paul Giamatti) gave Rose a lifetime ban from the sport.  

In addition to the permanent ban from taking part in America’s Pastime, he was banned from the Hall of Fame three years later.