So we have arrived again at one of those moments, increasingly common in modern sports, where upon the death of a significant figure in some game or another, the populace of sports fans seeks out a comforting memory to define the fallen hero, only to run headlong into the uncomfortable truths of complicated lives. Joe Paterno was a college football coach committed to both winning and learning, a man for whom a library was named before a stadium; but his program long harbored an assistant coach guilty of the most heinous crimes imaginable. Jim Brown, nearly 60 years past his last carry, was at his death in 2022, still considered by many the greatest football player in history, evolution be damned, and a powerful agent for social change; but he also accumulated a damning catalogue of violence toward women that stretched across most of his adult life. The only option is nuance, but sports is not a nuanced ecosystem.
Pete Rose died Monday at age 83 in his adopted home of Las Vegas, an unironically perfect home for a man whose life and legacy came to be defined by gambling. Had Rose died shortly after his retirement from Major League Baseball in 1986, this would all be a simple exercise: He was one of the greatest players in history and would be elected to the Hall of Fame -- probably unanimously -- five years later. Easy. But Rose lived another 38 years, in ways that ranged from unappealing to illegal. In the end, his life was both an example of the rewards bestowed upon an athlete who knows only one direction and one speed -- “I played the right way,” he said hundreds of times, most recently in an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer during this baseball season -- and the futility in trying to live everyday life in the same way.
(A parallel struck me: 13 years ago I wrote a story for Sports Illustrated about my great uncle, Johnny Evers, a deadball-era baseball player, middleman in Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance, a Hall of Fame second baseman. My uncle was a small, skinny, desperately competitive athlete who found himself, once retired, overmatched by the demands of life after baseball. So it was with Rose. The single-mindedness that sports rewards is often out of step with an increasingly more complex society, although, no small factor, millions in salary can bridge the gap for some.)
Rose came into major league baseball as a 22-year-old rookie in 1963, hardened by several years in semi-pro leagues, determined to rise. He played with relentless energy. He ran to first base after walks and dove headlong into bases even when there was no incoming throw. He was quickly named “Charlie Hustle,” possibly by Mickey Mantle, possibly by Mantle’s 1960’s Yankees’ teammate Whitey Ford, or possibly by somebody else. The name was likely derisive, not complimentary, but Rose not only embraced it, but lived it.
To sports fans in the three-channel, daily-newspaper universe of the late 1960s and through the 1970s, Rose - and the Reds’ Big Red Machine -- were a relentless presence. As a teenager I watched him run over Cleveland catcher Ray Fosse to win the All-Star game; as a senior in high school I watched him beat up Buddy Harrelson, the undersized shortstop for my New York Mets, in the NLCS. He was a force of nature. In the late summer of 1985, back with the Reds as player-manager after five years with the Phillies and part of a season in Montreal, the country watched rapt as Rose wore down Ty Cobb’s 57-year-old record for career base hits, and broke it with a single to left-center off Eric Show of the Padres on Sept. 11, at age 44. He finished his career with 4,256 hits, a record that has not been threatened since.
He was a product of the time in which he played, when sports were consumed and covered in more genteel ways and athletes’ foibles where either unknown or unpublished, although he was on the edge of change. His charisma came from his passion and was embraced by a generation of older fans; he was a tonic for those who were unprepared for the rise of the activist Black athlete: Ali, Russell, Brown, Smith and Carlos. (Although to be fair, Rose was flamboyant in his own way; running out a walk is a flex; moreover, Rose was close friends with Black teammates at a time when clubhouses were often de facto segregated). His life would turn sharply in 1989, and come to define the rest of his career.
Rose had long been known inside baseball -- but not to the public -- to frequent racetracks and bet with both hands, but reports surfaced during spring training in 1989, as Rose, still managing the Reds, was being investigated for betting on baseball. At the time I was a 32-year-old general assignment reporter for Newsday, sent to Plant City, Florida to chase the story, along with reporters from many other outlets. Having grown up watching Rose’s full-bore playing style and reading the adulation heaped on him, it was surreal to listen as Rose sat in a dugout before practice and tried to justify the betting activity that had been made public. He seemed smaller, both defiant and defensive. He looked guilty... of something.
Baseball ordered an investigation and in August of 1989, commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti announced that Rose had been banned from baseball for betting illegally on many sports, including baseball (I was also in attendance for that announcement, at the New York Hilton on Sixth Ave., on a sweltering summer afternoon; it was also surreal). Rose would deny the baseball piece for more than a decade. He was soon thereafter declared ineligible for the Hall of Fame. And in a tragic epilogue, Giamatti died of a heart attack at age 51 just a week after banning Rose.
The actions of that afternoon in New York were the foundation on which an enduring debate was built. Did Rose belong in the Hall, despite his gambling? His case was more sympathetic before 2002, when Rose wrote in his autobiography, with Rick Hill, that he told Giamatti’s successor, Bud Selig, that he did, indeed, bet on baseball. But even with that, the issue persisted, too alluring for a sports culture increasingly drifting toward talk radio-style arguments, too filled with arguments and counter-arguments, all plausible.
And it’s true, the so-called shrine in Cooperstown is full of disreputable rogues, and alleged and admitted steroid cheats like Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Roger Clemens have not been denied entry to the Hall, although have not been voted in, either.
“Shoeless” Joe Jackson, who was among the eight members of the 1919 “Black Sox” who took bribes to throw the World Series, is barred from the Hall; his commonality with Rose is that both undermined the sport’s competitive integrity, although there is no evidence that Rose intentionally lost games, and he has said that he bet on the Reds, but never against them. “I would rather die than lose a baseball game,” he wrote in his book. “There is no temptation on earth that could get me to fix a game.” It is also inescapable that legal gambling and sports are now exhaustively partners, although players are widely not allowed to bet.
Even as the Hall’s doors remained shut, Rose did not exit public life. He was a fixture in Cooperstown during Hall of Fame weekend, and his autograph sessions drew long lines. He also did jail time for tax evasion related to memorabilia income. Rose’s personal life was a jagged line: He was married twice and divorced twice, with four children (including Pete, Jr., who was a minor league player and manager), and also admitted to fathering another daughter out of wedlock while married. In 2017, an unidentified woman claimed to have had a sexual relationship with Rose in the 1970s, when he was married with two children, and she was under 16 years old. Rose said publicly that he believed the woman had been 16, which was the age of legal consent in Ohio. Rose was not exposed to charges because the statute of limitations had expired, but it was all deeply tawdry.
It comes to this: As much as there was to admire about Rose the athlete, there was nearly as much to detest about Rose the man. But those scales are not weighted equally. On Monday evening, as news of Rose’s passing spread, media and social media overflowed with recollections of Rose’s headlong ride through his playing career, and not just the 4,256 hits, but the 17 All-Star appearances, the three MVP awards, the three World Series (two with the Reds, one with the Phillies). A photo was posted of Rose with Reds’ teammates, taken at a card show shortly before his death, more powerful than any recitation of unseemly deeds.
A great player, a less than perfect human. Choose your memory. Write your epitaph.
Tim Layden is writer-at-large for NBC Sports. He was previously a senior writer at Sports Illustrated for 25 years.