Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader who was banned from the sport after he gambled on his own team as a player and manager, died Monday. He was 83.
The Clark County, Nevada, medical examiner’s office confirmed Rose’s death, the cause of which was not immediately available.
Rose played 24 seasons in the major leagues, the last three of which as a player-manager. He most famously played for the Cincinnati Reds from 1963 to 1978 and again from 1984 to 1986. Rose was placed on MLB’s ineligible list in August 1989 after an investigation revealed he had gambled on baseball — including on the Reds’ own games — when he was manager.
He did not admit to gambling on baseball until 2004, when he wrote in his autobiography that he bet both as a player and a manager but never against his own team.
Rose was a 17-time All-Star and three-time World Series champion who won the National League MVP award in 1973. He retired from playing after the 1986 season with 4,256 hits, a record that stands to this day. He also retired with the records for games played and at-bats.
Nicknamed “Charlie Hustle,” Rose was known for his gritty style of play. In the 1970 All-Star Game, he scored the winning run for the National League by colliding with Cleveland Indians catcher Ray Fosse at home plate.
In the years following his ban from baseball, Rose applied several times for reinstatement but was never admitted. The National Hall of Fame also began excluding players on the permanently ineligible list from being inducted in 1991, preventing Rose from earning the sport’s highest honor.
Rose faced legal troubles off the field after his ban. He spent time in prison from July 1990 to January 1991 after he pleaded guilty to tax evasion.
A court document that became public as part of a 2017 lawsuit also alleged that Rose committed statutory rape in the 1970s. In the document, a woman alleged that Rose, 32 at the time, called her in 1973 — when she was 14 or 15 — and thereafter, before she was 16, “began a sexual relationship” with her that “lasted for several year.”
Rose admitted having sex with her — but said it was in 1975, when he thought she was 16, Ohio’s age of consent, according to the filing.
The lawsuit from which the statutory rape allegations emerged was later dismissed, ESPN reported.
A native of Cincinnati, Rose was admitted into the Reds Hall of Fame in 2016. In 1999, he was allowed to take the field in Atlanta as an exception to his ban to appear in a ceremony for MLB’s All-Century Team.