Pete Rose, who played baseball with such boyish and fierce enthusiasm that he was known as Charlie Hustle but whose certain entrance to the game’s Hall of Fame was doomed by his lifelong suspension for betting on games, died Monday, according to multiple reports. He was 83.
Rose’s agent, Ryan Fiterman, told TMZ.com that Rose had died at his home in Las Vegas. The Cincinnati Reds also announced Rose’s death.
Rose finished with more hits than any other player in the history of Major League Baseball and once was one of the country’s best known and most admired athletes. For years, he denied he’d bet on games while a player and manager for the Reds — a team he’d led to glory again and again. Even when he finally came clean with a lucrative book deal and renewed hope of reinstatement hanging in the balance, he continued to insist that he’d never bet against his own team.
“I bet on my own team to win,” Rose told NJ.com. “That’s what I did in a nutshell. I was wrong, but I didn’t taint the game. I bet on my team every night because that’s the confidence that I had in my players. And I was wrong.”
Though he had been banned from baseball since 1989, served five months in a federal prison camp for income tax evasion, was a known philanderer and a largely unsuccessful gambler, Rose remained one of the most beloved former athletes in the nation. The Hall of Fame might not have wanted him, but fans clung to him.
Such is the dichotomy of Peter Edward Rose.
He was the squatty switch hitter with the ’50s flattop crewcut, the guy in the dirty uniform who ran hard to first base on walks, slid headfirst, signed autographs without hesitation and was a charming, engaging storyteller. Sure he had his faults, but to his adoring fans that just made him a lovable rascal.
Author Roger Kahn, who wrote a flattering book with Rose, “Pete Rose: My Story,” ultimately saw him in a different light.
In a piece written for The Times when Rose finally confessed in 2004, Kahn wrote, “… I didn’t care much for Rose. He was talented, but his talent was not in the same league as that of Willie Mays or Joe DiMaggio. He seemed to be able to talk only about himself, gambling, young women on the road — a classically adolescent character. His speech was larded with obscenity and boastfulness. As opposed to, say, his [Cincinnati Reds] teammate, Johnny Bench, he was oppressively vulgar.”
Rose was introduced to gambling early in life. His father and friends would include him in forays to the local racetrack. As he grew older, he bet the horses on his own, adding football and basketball to his repertoire.
In his book “My Prison Without Walls,” written with Rick Hill, Rose bragged, “Over the years, I earned what you’d call a basketball pedigree. I understood the game, so I knew how to bet the game. I got to the point where I could have sat in on the NBA draft and advised each team on its selections.”
Somehow, though, he managed to run up sizable debts, at times selling memorabilia to satisfy his bookies. None of that seemed to matter.
“On Feb. 5, 1986, I wrote three checks for eight grand each to cover my losses on the NFL playoffs,” Rose wrote. “The NFL turned into March Madness, which turned into the NBA playoffs, which always turned into the skids. Baseball season meant it was time for me . . . to go to work. I always lived by one hard and fast rule: You don’t bet on baseball. But for the first time in my life, I was no longer playing baseball, just managing.”
“A part of me was still looking for ways to recapture the high I got from winning batting titles and World Series. If I couldn’t get the high from playing baseball, then I needed a substitute.
“I can’t honestly remember the first time I bet on baseball. But I remember the first time I spoke openly about it. I was sitting in my living room, watching the 1986 playoffs between the Mets and the Astros. I had a group of friends over for the game. Without even thinking of the consequences, I said, ‘Betting on the playoffs makes the games more exciting to watch.’ ”
Rose was born April 14, 1941, in the Anderson Ferry section of Cincinnati on the Ohio River. His father, Harry, a bank teller, played semipro football on weekends, an inspiration to young Pete with his intensity. Pete, an indifferent student, followed his dad into sports, playing high school football and baseball, making up in determination for what he lacked in size and natural ability.
He certainly was no cinch to make it to the major leagues, though. One early scouting report on him said, “Can’t hit, can’t throw, can’t run.” Luckily for Rose though, he had an uncle, Buddy Bloebaum, with some influence. Uncle Buddy had connections with the Reds and put in a good word for his nephew. The Reds signed him in 1960 for $400 a month, a $7,000 signing bonus and a $5,000 incentive if he made the major leagues, then sent him off to the Class D Geneva Redlegs in the Finger Lakes region of New York.
Rose thrived in the minors, grew and gained weight and by 1963 went to spring training with the big club. During an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, his exuberant style caught the notice of Yankees greats Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford. They hung the Charlie Hustle tag on him and it stuck.
Rose was National League rookie of the year that season, then went on to become a major part of manager Sparky Anderson’s “Big Red Machine,” playing both infield and outfield, becoming what baseball old-timers liked to call “a hitting fool.”
He helped the Reds to two World Series titles, then signed as a free agent with the Philadelphia Phillies and helped them to one as well. In his 24-year career as a player, he had a .303 batting average, won three league batting titles, won league and World Series most-valuable-player awards, two Gold Gloves for fielding excellence, and was a 17-time all-star. In 1978, he had a 44-game hitting streak, missing DiMaggio’s record by 12 games.
Critics point out that Rose’s hits were mostly singles and doubles and that his runs batted in total, 1,314, was sorely lacking. Supporters respond that, as a leadoff hitter, it was Rose’s job to get on base, not drive in runs, and cite his 2,165 runs scored, sixth on the all-time list, as proof of his status as one of the best leadoff hitters in baseball history.
He also was involved in one of the most infamous plays in All-Star Game history, a violent collision at home plate with catcher Ray Fosse. Rose, scoring the winning run in the 12th inning at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium in 1970, crashed into Fosse, the jarring play breaking Fosse’s shoulder.
Rose was roundly criticized for the play in what was a glorified exhibition game but said he was merely trying to win and that Fosse, without the ball, was blocking the plate. The oft-injured Fosse later claimed that lingering effects from his shoulder injury hastened his retirement.
As his career rolled on, it became apparent that if Rose stayed in the game long enough, he probably would break Ty Cobb’s long-standing record of 4,191 hits. And he did precisely that, ending his career with 4,256 hits. After five seasons with the Phillies, he signed as a free agent with the Montreal Expos in 1984, played 95 rather ordinary games with them then, in mid-August, was traded back to the Reds, who made him player-manager.
Being back in Cincinnati seemed to energize Rose. He regained his batting eye and on Sept 11, 1985, in a home game against the San Diego Padres, hit a clean single in the first inning against Eric Show for No. 4,192.
The game was stopped for an eight-minute ovation as Rose, after hugging his bat-boy son Pete Jr., stood crying at first base. Fireworks filled the sky and a brilliant sunset turned the clouds pink. “It was like a scene from ‘The Natural,’ ” said one of the umpires who’d worked the game.
Rose later described it to Kahn: “I saw clear in the sky my dad and Ty Cobb. Ty Cobb was in the second row. Dad was in the first. With Dad in the sky and Petey in my arms, you had three generations of Rose men there that night. So that’s what it was that made me cry.”
Cincinnati later celebrated by renaming 2nd Street, the thoroughfare outside the team’s stadium on the Ohio River, Pete Rose Way.
But away from the diamond, Rose’s life was tangled and messy.
Wrote Pat Calabria in Newsday after Rose was banished, “Behind the gleaming All-America smile and the irrepressible charm, Pete Rose has spent much of his career putting out one brushfire after another. Until now, he always managed to escape unharmed. . . . Rose was a remarkable hitter and enormously popular . . . his face was on the front of a Wheaties box. But the public image never did square with the private reality.”
At the height of Rose’s troubles, his mother, LaVerne Rose Noeth, told the Washington Post, “I am a wreck, a total wreck. I have a reason to be, don’t you think? After all, I’m Pete Rose’s mother.”
If Rose was continually putting out brushfires, his lawyer and self-proclaimed surrogate father, Reuven Katz, was paying the price. Katz helped Rose through two divorces, an uncontested paternity suit filed by a woman claiming to have been his mistress, government liens, tax troubles and his unceasing clamor for reinstatement. Even Katz, though, couldn’t prevent the IRS from nailing him for failing to report income from gambling, memorabilia sales and card shows. Or get him reinstated.
By 1989, rumors of Rose’s gambling had reached the ears of departing Commissioner Peter Ueberroth. Called to a meeting with Ueberroth, incoming Commissioner Bart Giamatti and his new assistant, Fay Vincent, Rose admitted having bet legally on horse racing and illegally on college and pro football and basketball, but denied ever betting on baseball.
“I got too much respect for the game,” he said.
Unconvinced, Giamatti authorized an investigation by Washington lawyer John Dowd, and in August, citing the findings in Dowd’s 225-page report, including witness testimony and volumes of evidence, Giamatti declared Rose disqualified from baseball and the Hall of Fame for life. Rose signed a document agreeing to the disbarment.
Dowd determined that Rose had bet on baseball games, including his own team’s, with three bookmakers, using five intermediaries or “runners” to place the bets and collect winnings, if any. Two of the runners were allegedly involved in drug trafficking as well.
“It was a hatchet job, a piece of crap,” Rose said of the investigation to the Washington Post. “If people think this is all bad for baseball, I just want them to know: It ain’t my fault. I didn’t start this thing. I just want a fair hearing. If I get a fair shake, I will prove everybody wrong, believe me.”
That, of course, didn’t happen. But, Rose reasoned, if he couldn’t be in the midst of baseball, he could be on its fringes. He continued selling autographs at card shows, where he was usually swarmed by fans, and peddled “official” Pete Rose caps, posters, pennants, jerseys and bobbleheads. He had a booth each summer at Cooperstown during the Hall of Fame induction weekend. He did radio and TV, both as a baseball commentator and talk show host, and there were Pete Rose restaurants in various cities.
To support his ongoing gambling habit, he sold personal memorabilia, uniforms he’d worn, the Corvette he was given for breaking Cobb’s record, even the bat and ball involved in breaking it.
Through it all, and with great public support, he kept hoping for reinstatement and Hall of Fame enshrinement.
Even his first wife, Karolyn, who declared bankruptcy after their divorce and had to sell some of his memorabilia, including his 1975 World Series MVP ring, to save her house from creditors, told the New York Daily News in 2003 that she supported his Hall of Fame quest.
“This man has given 110% to baseball,” she said. “He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. During his hitting streak, he got muscle spasms so bad I had to dress him, but he’d tell Sparky he’d be ready to play. So what if he went to a casino? His problems with the IRS are his own business. He’s not bothering anyone.”
In 2020, a group of law professors led by Erwin Chemerinsky, petitioned Major League Baseball to reinstate Rose, arguing that after 31 years his punishment seemed outsize, especially during an era of rampant steroid use and high-tech cheating, such as the sign-stealing employed by the Houston Astros in the 2017 World Series against the Dodgers. The lawyers pointed out that the punishment against the Astros players and coaches was mild or nonexistent, even though their actions may have cost the Dodgers a championship.
“In this context,” the attorneys argued, “Rose’s reinstatement to baseball and eligibility for the Hall of Fame is the only way to restore a proper sense of proportionality… Let Pete Rose back in.”
But baseball shrugged and Rose’s banishment from the game stood.
Twice married and divorced, Rose is survived by sons Pete Jr. and Tyler, and daughters Fawn and Cara.
Mike Kupper is a former Times staff writer.
