Tony Tomsic-USA TODAY NETWORK
Pete Rose died on Monday at his home in Las Vegas, closing the book on an 83-year life that included an incredible, record-setting 24-year major league career that was soon followed by three and a half decades of wandering in a desert of his own making. Handed down by commissioner Bart Giamatti in 1989, his permanent banishment from organized baseball for gambling — a prohibition that dates back to predecessor Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis’ effort to clean up the game in the wake of the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal — prevented the all-time leader in hits and games played from cementing his legacy with enshrinement in the Hall of Fame, and from working within baseball in any capacity.
Backed by a sizable contingent of admirers and apologists — and a smaller faction of truthers, a group that at one point included Bill James — Rose spent decades denying his transgressions, lying to the public, to baseball officials, and to himself. Deprived of the financial windfall that would have come with election to the Hall, “The Hit King” chose instead to try making a buck with anything he could put his name on. That included everything from a 2004 no. 1 best-selling autobiography, My Prison Without Bars, in which he admitted in print to gambling while managing the Reds (he had done so in pre-publication publicity as well) to autographed balls with the inscription “I’m sorry I bet on baseball.” That assertion rang hollow given Rose’s apparent lack of contrition, his unwillingness to reconfigure his life as a precondition of his reinstatement by MLB, and his continued lies. Not until 2015 did he admit to gambling during his playing career, after ESPN’s Outside the Lines obtained copies of documents verifying his bets in 1986 while serving as the player-manager of the Reds. Elsewhere during the last decade of his life, a credible allegation of statutory rape dating to the 1970s, uncovered by prosecutor John Dowd during his investigation into Rose’s gambling, undermined his latter-day reinstatement effort while further chipping away at his public standing.
It’s been a fall from grace without parallel, at least among baseball’s icons. On the field, Rose was a dynamo, a stocky, 5-foot-11 switch-hitter who made up for his lack of physical gifts — beyond great eyesight and bat-to-ball skill — with a competitive intensity and high-energy, hard-nosed style of play that wouldn’t have been out of place a half-century before his 1963 arrival in the majors. “He played every game like it was the seventh game of the World Series,” said his longtime teammate Joe Morgan.
Signed by the hometown Cincinnati Reds out of high school in 1960, Rose was a second baseman even in the minors, perceived as lacking the arm strength to play shortstop, the speed to play the outfield, or the power to play a corner position. “Can’t run, hit, throw or field. All Rose can do is hustle,” read one early scouting report. Hustle. That word would stick to him. When he sprinted to first base after drawing a walk in a 1963 exhibition game against the Yankees, Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle derisively nicknamed him “Charlie Hustle” — but Rose, who earned the second base job and would go on to win Rookie of the Year honors, wore the moniker as a badge of honor.
In 2017, he recalled watching a game with his father, Harry Rose, a bank teller and semiprofessional athlete of local renown, and a demanding figure whose drive and intensity young Pete subsumed. “I was eight or nine years old and watching (a game),” Rose told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Enos Slaughter sprinted to first base on a walk. My dad told me that was what you needed to do to be in position to be able to advance further if possible. So I started doing it… That became the way I played. My dad said the quicker you get to first base, the quicker you go around the bases.”
Even in the prime of a playing career that at the major league level stretched through 1986, Rose was not “the greatest player in the history of baseball,” as talk show host and fellow Ohio native Phil Donahue introduced him for a 1985 episode celebrating his 4,192nd hit. Nor was he the equal of Ty Cobb, the dominant Deadball Era player whose record he broke. Rose was a singles- and doubles-hitting superstar, and a tremendously popular one in the way that perennial .300 hitters have been for over a century. It’s easy to forget with the home run boom of the last three decades, but batting average has equaled entertainment value for so much of the game’s history, and if that has made Rose a touch overrated and polarizing when measured by 21st-century sabermetric standards — not unlike Derek Jeter or Ichiro Suzuki — he was still admired and beloved, particularly in Cincinnati, where he was the hometown boy making good, a blue-collar player cheered by blue-collar fans.
Rose’s skills, such as they were, made him a top-notch leadoff man — his total of 2,924 hits from that spot has been surpassed only by Rickey Henderson — and a catalyst on numerous contending teams, including eight that made the postseason and six that reached the World Series. Cincinnati never won a pennant during the years between his debut and the advent of division play in 1969, but he helped “The Big Red Machine” — which also numbered future Hall of Famers Morgan, Johnny Bench, and Tony Perez among its stars — to NL West titles in 1970, ’72, 73, ’75, and ’76, winning the pennant four times (all but 1973, the year his aggressive takeout slide into 150-pound Mets shortstop Bud Harrelson triggered a brawl during the National League Championship Series). The Reds won the World Series in 1975 and ’76, with Rose earning MVP honors in the first of those while hitting .370/.485/.481 in the seven-game classic against the Red Sox. After signing a four-year, $3.225 million contract with the Phillies in December 1978, he helped them to a trio of division titles in 1980, ’81 (first half of the strike-split season) and ’83. They captured their first championship in franchise history in 1980, and another pennant in ’83, when Rose was reunited with Morgan and Perez. Sports Illustrated christened them “The Wheeze Kids,” as by season’s end all three were over 40.
In 301 postseason plate appearances, Rose hit /.321/.388/.440, a big step up from his regular season .303/.375/.409 (118 OPS+) slash line. In part because he stuck around in pursuit of milestones well after his skills had eroded (dragging the aforementioned slash line down), Rose’s numbers are staggering, seemingly as out of reach for hitters as Cy Young’s are for pitchers. In addition to the career record for hits (4,256), he owns the records for most games played (3,562), plate appearances (15,890), at-bats (14,503), times on base (5,929), and singles (3,215); meanwhile, he ranks second in doubles (746), sixth in runs (2,145), and ninth in total bases (5,752). He qualified for a batting title with a .300 average or better 15 times, all within a 17-season span (1965–81) that was notorious for its low batting averages. He won a trio of batting titles, in 1968 (“The Year of the Pitcher”), ’69, and ’73, finishing in the top 10 13 times, and in the top 10 in on-base percentage 11 times.
Once he hit his 30s, Rose became a more contact-oriented hitter at the expense of his power:
Pete Rose, 1965–81 Seasons Ages H/Yr HR/Yr BB% K% AVG OBP SLG OPS+ WAR/Yr
1965–71 24–30 202 13 9.0% 9.2% .319 .382 .461 132 5.2
1972–81 31–40 197 5 10.5% 5.7% .312 .388 .416 124 4.0
SOURCE: Baseball-Reference
Rose collected at least 200 hits in a season 10 times, leading his league seven times, more than any other AL/NL player besides Cobb. Ironically, he fell two hits short of 200 in 1978, the year he tied Willie Keeler‘s 82-year-old National League record by collecting hits in 44 consecutive games; only Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game streak from 1941 was longer. Rose made 17 All-Star teams and started…
