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Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time hit king and Cincinnati Reds icon whose signature gritty hustle couldn’t surpass the gambling violations and embezzlement that kept him out of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, has died, a National spokesman said. Baseball Hall of Fame. Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner in Nevada. He was 83.

Rose was one of baseball’s greatest players: a winning-obsessed spark plug who topped the MLB all-time hit list with 4,256 over a 24-season career. He was notable for his all-in effort, sliding headfirst and even running when a pitcher walked him — a style that earned him the nickname, at first mockingly, then admiringly, “Charlie Hustle.”

He played for three World Series championship teams – the Reds’ stacked “Big Red Machine” roster in 1975 and 1976, and the Philadelphia Phillies in 1980 – was named to the National League All-Star team 17 times, winning both the National League as the National League. Rookie of the Year Award (1963) and Most Valuable Player Award (1973).

But his gambles on his own team — and his denials — ended his budding career as a baseball manager and kept the sport’s most prolific hitter from enjoying top honors.

MLB hired a lawyer to investigate Rose in early 1989 after reports were received that he had bet on MLB games. MLB Rule 21 says that personnel who bet on games in which they have a “duty of performance” will be permanently disqualified.

The report by lawyer John Dowd concluded that Rose gambled on the sport, including Reds games – in 1985 and 1986, when he was both a Reds player and manager of the team, and in 1987, when he was just the manager. Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti banned Rose from baseball for life in August 1989, saying he could apply for reinstatement after a year after demonstrating a “redirected, reconfigured, rehabilitated life.”

But Rose denied it in more ways than one, saying for years that he had not bet on baseball or the Reds. On the day he was ruled out, he said he thought he would be “out of baseball for a very short period of time.”

In 1991, the Baseball Hall of Fame passed a rule that said any player on the sport’s permanent ineligible list would not appear on the ballot. It wasn’t until 2004 that Rose publicly admitted that he had bet on baseball and the Reds, although he denied ever betting against his own team. He wrote in his 2004 autobiography, “My Prison Without Bars,” that he turned to betting as a way “to recapture the high I got from winning batting titles and World Series.”

“I had a huge appetite, and I was always hungry. It wasn’t that I was bored with the challenges of managing the Reds – I just didn’t want the challenges to end,” he wrote in his book.

He knew the penalty for gambling on games he was involved in was a permanent ban, “so I denied the crime,” he wrote.

The denials – and subsequent suggestions that Rose was still not telling the whole truth – were damaging. Giamatti never considered reinstatement, as he died eight days after banning Rose.

In 2007, Rose told ESPN Radio that he gambled on the Reds “every night” when he managed the team. But Dowd told ESPN2 the next day that Rose did not gamble when certain Reds players threw. That, New York Times baseball writer Murray Chass wrote, could wrongly tell people he wasn’t confident about winning those games.

In 2015, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred denied Rose’s request for reinstatement, saying that Rose only admitted to betting on baseball in 1987 while only managing the Reds, and that Rose claimed he did not remember evidence in the report from Dowd that indicated he was gambling. while he was still playing in 1985 and 1986. Rose’s comments “give me little confidence that he has a mature understanding of his unlawful conduct,” Manfred wrote.

Later, Rose appeared to have given up entry into the Hall of Fame during his lifetime. Betting on baseball was one of the things he would take back if he could, he wrote in his 2019 autobiography, “Play Hungry.”

“I’m not a guy who says sorry for everything, but right now I’m really sorry,” he wrote.

“I know that if I ever somehow get into the Hall of Fame, it will certainly be long after I am gone from this world,” he wrote. “But I want you to know how much I loved baseball, how I lived a life dedicated to the sport and how I played the game the road it must be played…always completely out.”

Peter Edward Rose was born in 1941 and raised in Cincinnati, son of LaVerne and Harry Francis “Pete” Rose, a bank teller and semi-professional baseball and football player. He idolized his father and watched him play football until the elder Rose stopped playing in his early 40s. He focused solely on sports to make his father proud.

“Everything I ever wanted in life started and ended with loving my dad… and wanting to make him proud of me,” Rose wrote in “Play Hungry.”

Rose said that it was not through natural skill that he became a great hitter, but through sheer will and practice; his father’s decision to bat from both sides of the plate when he was nine; his willingness as a pro to take tips from big players like Hank Aaron and Willie Mays; and doing homework on opposing pitchers.

“I knew what every pitcher was throwing. I knew when he was going to throw it. … And the day of the game, I knew how I was going to approach (Sandy) Koufax or (Don) Drysdale or (Juan) Marichal or (Bob) Gibson,” Rose told “OutKick 360” in 2022.

After high school, his uncle, a Reds scout, got him a tryout with the Reds, who signed him to a minor league contract in the summer of 1960.

By the end of his first full season in the minors in 1961, the second baseman had turned heads with the second-best batting average in the league – .331 – and by playing his heart out on every play, even after drawing a walk. This trait would rub opponents the wrong way, but he didn’t care.

“You make your own skill by working harder and trying harder than anyone else,” he wrote in “Play Hungry.”

In 1963, his first year in the majors, that effort earned him the nickname “Charlie Hustle.” Several stories say that Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford sarcastically gave him the nickname during spring training, either after seeing him run after a walk, or after seeing him run during pregame practice.

But Rose’s style would grow among Cincinnati fans. He hit .273 in his Rookie of the Year campaign and in 1965 he led the league in hits (209) and a .312 batting average. That would be the first of sixteen seasons in which he hit at least .300; the first of 10 seasons with 200 or more hits (a Major League record); and the first of seven years he led the league in hits.

Defense wasn’t his strength, but he was versatile: He was the only player in Major League history to play more than 500 games at five different positions: first base, second, third, left field and right field. He continued to earn two Gold Glove awards for excellence as an outfielder in 1969 and 1970.

His busyness sometimes caused controversy. In the 1970 All-Star game – ostensibly an exhibition – he ran over American League catcher Ray Fosse at the plate, forcing Fosse to miss the ball and allowing Rose to score the winning run. Fosse’s shoulder was broken and he did not enjoy the same level of playing success afterwards. “He did his job and I did mine,” Rose wrote in “Play Hungry.” “Neither of us did anything wrong.” Such an action probably wouldn’t have been allowed in today’s match; a 2014 MLB rule says runners cannot collide with catchers if a slide would avoid it, and that catchers cannot block the runners’ path without having the ball.

Rose played for the Reds until 1978 – often captaining a lineup that included future Hall of Famers Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench and Tony Perez – and the Phillies from 1979 to 1983. He played half a season for the Montreal Expos in 1984 before returning to Cincinnati, where he would be both a player and manager until 1986.

At age 44, he broke Ty Cobb’s Major League record of 4,191 career hits on September 11, 1985, driving No. 4,192 to left center at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati against the San Diego Padres. The game stopped for about seven minutes as the crowd cheered, with Rose standing first and eventually crying as he collected hugs and handshakes from opponents, teammates and his 14-year-old son, Pete Rose Jr.. The Reds released him as a player the year thereon, but he would manage the team until MLB banned him in 1989, ending his managerial run with a .525 winning percentage.

Rose also holds MLB records for games played (3,562) and at-bats (14,053).

He spent some of his final years in Las Vegas, trading on his baseball success and betting fame, spending hours a day selling autographs at or near various casinos. Sometimes, during the weekend of baseball Hall of Fame inductions in Cooperstown, New York, he also held book signings at a nearby bookstore. From 2021 until at least April 2023, he worked on “Pete Rose’s Daily Picks,” a podcast in which he gave advice on sports betting.

Although Cooperstown did not admit him to the Hall of Fame, the Reds inducted him into their Hall of Fame with the permission of the commissioner. In June 2016, fans cheered when the Reds inducted him into the team’s Hall of Fame during an on-field ceremony at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. The hometown boy described the love affair he had with the fans.

“You motivated me to play the way I did. … I wasn’t diving for me. I was diving for you. I was hitting for you. I was trying to score runs for you,” he said.

The Reds gave him a statue outside the ballpark in 2017, showing him sliding head first. That was the perfect way to catch Rose, said Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench.

‘How do you get a line-drive statue? This (the slide) is what Pete is, and the way we will always remember him,” Bench told reporters in 2017.

Separated from this first wife and divorced from his second in 2011, Rose’s survivors include a longtime fiancée and children, including Rose Jr., who played a month in the MLB for the Reds in 1997.

This story has been updated with additional information.