Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader, died yesterday. He was 83.
Mr. Rose did not drink, do drugs or smoke. His infamous vice was gambling.
After his retirement as a player, Mr. Rose began gambling on the game of baseball while managing the Cincinnati Reds. That included placing bets on games in which he managed one of the teams. Following an investigation in 1989, A. Bartlett Giamatti, the commissioner of baseball, announced that Mr. Rose had agreed to a lifetime ban from the sport. In 1991, the Baseball Hall of Fame ruled him ineligible for induction.
I never saw Mr. Rose play. Once, when I was watching a game on television in which Mr. Rose was managing, the camera cut to him on the bench. “That guy is such a hot dog,” my dad said.
The expression perplexed me at that age. I thought of food, of course. But my dad meant Mr. Rose was flashy and arrogant. And he was right. Mr. Rose also never shied away from expressing his disagreements with umpires.
In 2017, a woman came forward alleging she had a sexual relationship with Mr. Rose in the 1970s when she was 14 or 15 years old. He was known to be a womanizer and admitted to fathering at least one child out of marriage. He also served five months in prison after pleading guilty in 1990 to two charges of filing false income tax returns.
The questions about his character persist after his death. If he was addicted to gambling, perhaps some of his sins can be viewed differently. People who have addictions often feel powerless against them.
Despite his many failings, I believe Mr. Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame. Judging by the motley crew whose images already don its walls, one doesn’t need to be a saint to be inducted. And that’s the way it should be. The Hall of Fame is about how well you play baseball, not about what kind of person you are off the field.
Setting aside the question of character, there is no disputing Mr. Rose’s credentials for the Hall of Fame. With 4,256 hits, he sits atop Major League Baseball’s all-time hit leaderboard, less than a 100 more than Ty Cobb. The next closest player is Hank Aaron, with 3,771 hits.
Mr. Rose won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1963, and he was the National League’s most valuable player in 1973. He went to the All-Star Game 17 times.
He was a key player in the “The Big Red Machine,” the Cincinnati Reds team that included the likes of Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench and Tony Perez. That team dominated in the 1970s, winning the World Series in 1975 and 1976. He also led the Philadelphia Phillies to win their first World Series in 1980. (He helped the Phillies reach the World Series again in 1983, though they lost to the Baltimore Orioles in five games.)
Mr. Rose’s gambling as a manager eventually got him banned from the game, but he did have a winning record in that role, going 412-373 for the Reds.
He played to win, and he sprinted everywhere—even to first base after drawing a walk, earning him the moniker “Charlie Hustle.” He brought his uncompromising competitive spirit to the 1970 All-Star Game in Cincinnati, where Mr. Rose scored the winning run of the game in the 12th inning after diving headfirst into the opposing catcher. The catcher, the Cleveland Indians’ Ray Fosse, sustained a dislocated shoulder on the play. The pain plagued him for years.
“Would I do the same thing again today in the same situation? Damn right I would,” Mr. Rose wrote in his 2019 memoir. “But would I rather it had all gone down without Ray having suffered an injury that would dog his career? You bet.”
“My heart is sad. I loved you Peter Edward,” Mr. Bench said on Facebook after Mr. Rose’s passing. “You made all of us better. No matter the life we led. No one can replace you.”
The excellence Mr. Rose exemplified as a player does not blot out his many sins and shortcomings. Only God knows if he has fully repented. (For its part, as has been noted elsewhere, Major League Baseball now permits teams to partner in every stadium and in every broadcast with companies that lure fans into placing bets on their smartphones.)
Mr. Rose’s grit and passion as a player did lead him to accomplish feats few others have. There is no sense in punishing Mr. Rose after his death. After all, we’re not talking about the communion of saints. Today, Mr. Rose belongs with baseball’s all-time greats in the Hall of Fame.
Material from The Associated Press was used in this story.
