Yahoo Sports Baseball Legend Pete Rose Dead At 83
Controversial baseball player Pete Rose has died at the age of 83, according to a report by TMZ.
Rose’s agent, Ryan Fiterman, confirmed the news to TMZ but said the family “is asking for privacy at this time.”
In addition, ABC News confirmed Rose’s death with the medical examiner in Clark County, Nevada, on Monday.
No cause of death was officially announced.
Rose, who played in the major leagues from 1963 to 1986, mostly for the Cincinnati Reds during their Big Red Machine era, was banned for gambling on the sport. He still holds records for hits (4,256) and games played (3,562).
Due to an uncle’s connections, the Cincinnati native was drafted by the Reds despite barely being scouted.
He took advantage of the opportunity and became the National League Rookie of the Year in 1963, according to Cincinnati.com. During his two-decades plus in the sport, Rose was named an All-Star 17 times and was also chosen the National League’s Most Valuable Player in 1973.
Although Rose played more than 500 games at five different positions, he still won two Gold Gloves to go along with three batting titles. In 1978, he tied a nearly 100-year-old National League record when he got a hit in 44 games.
He earned the nickname “Charlie Hustle” for the way he would run to first base even when it appeared to be a routine out.
Rose won back-to-back World Series titles in 1975 and 1976 as a member of the Reds’ Big Red Machine and was the Series MVP in 1975.
He also won another series in 1980 as a member of the Philadelphia Phillies, but Rose spent most of that decade attempting to break Ty Cobb’s record for most hits, which he did in 1985 as a player-manager for the Cincinnati Reds.
But Rose was banned from baseball just four years later for betting on games while managing the Reds.
Rose denied any wrongdoing, but an investigation found that the “accumulated testimony of witnesses, together with the documentary evidence and telephone records revealed his extensive betting activity during the 1985, 1986, and 1987 baseball seasons.”
Rose was banned from baseball for life, a decree that also kept him out of the Baseball Hall of Fame, a longtime dream of his.
Rose repeatedly tried to get every acting baseball commissioner to overturn the ban and allow him to be voted into the Hall of Fame, but he was thwarted every time.
For many years, Rose denied gambling on games, but he did admit wrongdoing in a 2004 autobiography, though he insisted he never bet against the Reds.
In his 2019 memoir, “Play Hungry,” Rose said he didn’t think betting on baseball was “morally wrong” but said he didn’t do it the right way.
“There are legal ways, and there are illegal ways, and betting on baseball the way I did was against the rules of baseball,” he said, according to The Associated Press.
Despite the lifetime ban, Rose was allowed to take the field as a member of the MLB’s All-Century Team at a 1999 ceremony.
Rose, whose two marriages ended in divorce, leaves behind five children and a fiancée.
