LAS VEGAS — Pete Rose, one of Major League Baseball’s most polarizing athletes and the game’s all-time hits leader, has died at the age of 83, according to TMZ.
Rose’s agent, Ryan Fiterman, confirmed the news to TMZ and said, “the family is asking for privacy at this time.”
Rose, who played outfield, first and third base, was a 17-time all-star across a 24-year career at baseball’s highest level. Nicknamed “Charlie Hustle,” Rose was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, before spending the vast majority of his MLB career with his hometown Reds, where he won two of three World Series championships and the 1973 National League MVP award.
Of interest to Chicago sports fans, Rose got his first crack at making a big league roster during a 1963 spring training game against the Chicago White Sox.
Then-starting second baseman for the Reds, Don Blasingame, was removed from the game after pulling his groin, and Rose was substituted in as his replacement. The rest is history.
What Rose is best known for though is having more hits than any other player in MLB history (4,256), but not being inducted into the Cooperstown Professional Baseball Hall of Fame due to him being banned from baseball in 1989 due to a MLB ruling he bet on the game.
“I got suspended in 1989. You know how many years ago that was?” Rose told Nexstar affiliate KTLA last month. “Time usually creates everything. It’s been a long time and there’s been a lot of negative things that have happened in the world of baseball — and don’t get me wrong. I was absolutely 110% wrong in what I did.
“To do something like I did, which is bet on a baseball game, and now you’re punished for the rest of your life, I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to a lot of people.”