Major League Baseball’s career hits leader Pete Rose died Monday, September 30, 2024. A cause of death has not been determined yet. He was 83 years old.

The Cincinnati Reds great was a 17-time All-Star who was part of three World Series winning teams. He was the National League MVP in 1973 and World Series MVP in ’75. Rose has the record for games played at 3,562, plate appearances at 15,890, and the National League record for longest hitting streak at 44. Perhaps his most impressive record is his 4,256 hits, which beat Ty Cobb’s record of 4,191. He had 200 hits or more in 10 of those seasons and over 180 hits in four more seasons.

Rose was born on April 14, 1941, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and his father taught him how to be a switch hitter when he was a kid. Right after he graduated high school in 1960, he joined the Reds’ level D minor league team, working his way up to their level A team two years later.

He played 24 seasons in the Majors, spending 18 of them with the Reds, and his remaining six seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies and Montreal Expos. He played with the Reds from ’63 to ’78, then returned to the team for ’84 to ’86. From ’85 to ’89 he pulled double duty with the Reds as a player-manager.

Rose’s legacy was tarnished when an investigation revealed that he had been betting on baseball games, including Reds’ games. He denied the accusations, but documentary evidence, telephone records, and witness testimonies confirmed that he had been gambling on baseball. As punishment, in 1989, Rose agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball and it removed him from eligibility for the Hall of Fame.

In his 2004 autobiography and 2019 memoir, Rose admitted that he had bet on baseball. He stated that he never bet against his team and that he didn’t think that betting on baseball was morally wrong, though he acknowledged that the way he bet was against the rules.

Rose was also convicted of tax evasion and spent several months in prison for the crime. In 2017, a woman accused him of having a sexual relationship with her in the 1970s before she turned 16. Rose countered by acknowledging that they had a sexual relationship, but that he believed it started when she was 16, which is the legal age of consent in Ohio.

The Reds voted him to the team’s Hall of Fame in 2016 and a bronze sculpture of him is at Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park. Rose had just appeared at an autograph show the weekend prior to his death.