Pete Rose 1941-2024

Pete Rose, sliding in headfirst, as always.

Baseball’s Hit King, Pete Rose, died yesterday at the age of 83. Pete Rose was one of the greatest players in baseball history, as well as one of the most controversial. Rose has been the MLB hit leader for 39 years, and it’s safe to say that his record of 4,256 hits will stand for many more years. The controversy surrounding Rose will last for many more years too, as fans and historians will debate if he belongs in the Hall of Fame after his 1989 ban for betting on baseball. 

As a player, Pete Rose obviously belongs in the Hall of Fame. His accomplishments are amazing. Rose was a 17-time All-Star (a fun Minnesota connection—his first All-Star appearance was at Metropolitan Stadium in 1965, and his last All-Star appearance was at the Metrodome in 1985) he made the All-Star team at 5 different positions, (second base, left field, right field, third base, and first base) a record that will be impossible to break. Has anyone else even matched Rose’s accomplishment of being an All-Star at 3 different infield positions? Rose was a 3-time batting champion, and he finished in the top ten of batting average 13 times. He was the 1963 NL Rookie of the Year, and the 1973 NL MVP. Rose was a .321 hitter in the postseason, and he appeared in 6 World Series, winning the 1975 World Series MVP. Rose led the league in runs scored 4 times, in hits 7 times, and in doubles 5 times. Not known as a power hitter, Rose is second all-time in doubles, with an incredible total of 746.  

As a person, Pete Rose falls short of the Hall of Fame. Rose bet on baseball, and while no one ever accused him of throwing a game or giving less than his full effort on the field, it’s still a cardinal sin in baseball. I think it’s ridiculous that Rose didn’t just come clean in 1989 and confess that he had bet on baseball. Instead, he lied about betting on baseball for 15 years, before finally admitting the truth in a 2004 book. As a kid, that always confused me. If Rose didn’t bet on baseball, then why did he accept the ban from baseball? If he didn’t bet on baseball, then why didn’t he fight the ban? It’s a bit like Richard Nixon accepting Gerald Ford’s pardon after he resigned in 1974. I’m not going to say I did anything wrong, but I’ll accept this pardon just in case I may have done something wrong.  

But Rose fooled a lot of people for a long time, and even a baseball writer as smart as Bill James was an apologist for Pete Rose. In his 2001 book The New Bill James Historical Abstract, James spent six pages attacking the Dowd Report and casting doubt on the evidence that Rose bet on baseball. Of course, read today, it makes James sound foolish. 

You can admire Pete Rose’s grit, his tenacity, his hustle, and still find him lacking as a human being. If Rose had truly reconstituted his life in 1989 and lived the rest of his life after his ban from baseball the way, say, Stan Musial lived his life, maybe Rose would have seen the ban lifted. But he didn’t live his life that way, because he was Pete Rose. How could he do anything wrong?  

I was born in 1981, the year that Rose passed Stan Musial for the National League hit record. (Back in the day, records for each league had more importance than they do today.) Rose was an icon from the moment I became a baseball fan. To anyone slightly older than I am, Pete Rose was a huge symbol of baseball. You could argue that Pete Rose and Reggie Jackson were the two most iconic baseball players of the 1970’s. They were opposites, Reggie the powerful home run slugger, Rose the dedicated contact and average hitter. But they both captured the media’s attention and became stars.  

Back in 2015, Rose applied for reinstatement, hoping that Rob Manfred would be more receptive to his case than Bud Selig ever was. Rose was wrong. Reading Manfred’s statement is illuminating of the kind of person Pete Rose was. In true Rose fashion, he told Manfred he didn’t currently bet on baseball, and then backtracked later in his interview to say he does still bet on baseball. 

Rose still generates conversation, 35 years after his ban from baseball. When I was in Cooperstown with my family this summer, Pete Rose was there, signing autographs. We talked to a guy who had eaten breakfast at the same place Rose did. He said that one morning, Pete was facing away from the door, and he figured Rose didn’t want people to bother him, but the next morning, he was sitting facing out to the restaurant, so this guy said hi to Pete and ended up having a nice conversation with him for 10 minutes about baseball. We had breakfast at that restaurant the next morning, but we didn’t see Pete there. We did see Rose at the Safe at Home memorabilia store in Cooperstown. I didn’t pay for an autograph, but we at least saw Pete, although the store had practically blockaded him, I assume to keep people like us from just looking at Pete for free. Rose looked good when I saw him. He looked like, well, how Pete Rose always did.  

I also had a conversation about Pete Rose with a guy who was staying at the same motel. Like most people, this guy thought Rose should be in the Hall of Fame. I’m torn, because I do believe that Rose deserves to be in the Hall of Fame as a player. But I also believe that Rose bet on baseball, and he accepted the ban, and he really didn’t do much to change his ways after 1989. I do think it’s a positive sign that people wanted Pete Rose back in baseball—people were not full of hatred and retribution towards Pete Rose. And even though I might seem harsh on Rose, there’s part of me that still likes him. He was a great player. He loved playing the game, and he played all-out, every single day. Pete Rose is so close to being the perfect role model. So close, and yet so far. Maybe that’s the moral of Pete Rose, that he was so talented, so gifted, but he had fatal flaws as well. He was human.