Pete Rose, Baseball Legend and ‘Hit King,’ Dead at 83

Major League Baseball legend Pete Rose has died. Jeffrey Lenkov, the baseball legend’s attorney, confirmed Rose’s death to Rolling Stone Monday, coincidentally the last night of the 2024 MLB regular season. Rose was 83.

The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office also confirmed the news to Rolling Stone, although it said “no other information is available” yet.

Rose, whose nickname was “Charlie Hustle,” spent 23 years in the MLB, playing a total of 3,562 games, and spending most of his career at the Cincinnati Reds during the Ohio team’s golden decade in the Seventies. During his time with the Reds, he won two World Series in 1975 and 1976. He later won the trophy for a third time while playing for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1980. Rose’s legendary No. 14 was retired from the Reds in June 2016.

“The Reds are heartbroken to learn of the passing of baseball legend Pete Rose,” the Cincinnati team wrote in tribute to the baseball legend Monday.

Rose was a seventeen-time All-Star and earned the National League Rookie of the Year award when he debuted with Cincinnati in 1963. He ended his career as a player with the Reds in 1986 when he juggled being a manager and coach. He continued his career as a manager through 1989.

Rose’s career was not without controversy, however. The baseball player-turned-manager was banned from the sport in August 1989 after being accused of gambling on games while managing and playing for the team. (He later admitted to betting in 2004.)

Among his MLB records, Rose hit a whooping 4,256 hits, including 3,215 singles from 15,890 career plate appearances. Along with playing multiple seasons for the Phillies and Reds, Rose spent a year with the Montreal Expos in 1984. Of his 24 seasons as a baseball player, he had 200 hits or more in 10 seasons, and more than 180 hits during four other seasons.

“There has never been another player like Pete Rose in my lifetime. This is the way I will remember him, playing the game harder than anyone else ever did,” wrote ESPN sportscaster Mike Greenberg on X. “Few athletes will leave behind more complicated legacies. Today isn’t the day for that. Today, let’s just say thanks to Charlie Hustle, for playing the way we always dreamt we would if given the chance.”

Given the hitter’s past with sports betting, Rose was deemed “permanently ineligible” for the Baseball Hall of Fame in the Nineties, although his exclusion from the Hall has been an issue of controversy over the years.

Rose was born in Cincinnati on April 14, 1941, and spent his high school years playing both baseball and football. During his rookie year at the Reds in 1963, he earned the title “Charlie Hustle” for sprinting to first base after being walked at a spring training game against the New York Yankees.

Rose made his MLB debut in April 1963 against the Pittsburgh Pirates, days before his 22nd birthday. During the summer of 1978, Rose got a hit in 44 consecutive games, coming close to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game record. He still holds the third-longest hitting streak following the Orioles’ Willie Keeler and the Yankee’s Joe DiMaggio.