Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader who earned a lifetime ban from the sport after he gambled on Cincinnati Reds games he managed, died Monday at 83, the Reds confirmed to USA TODAY Sports.
Rose, whose 4,256 hits are a record that will likely never be broken, was ushered from the game in shame after an exhaustive 1989 investigation determined that he’d placed wagers on the Reds through illegal bookmakers. Rose and Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti signed an agreement in which Rose agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball in return for the league not making a formal determination about whether or not he had bet on baseball.
Giamatti died on Sept. 1, 1989, just one week after Rose signed the agreement he crafted. Yet in the 33 years since, three successive commissioners – Fay Vincent, Bud Selig and Rob Manfred – have upheld the ban, and Rose remains ineligible for the Hall of Fame, to the chagrin of some of his fans.