Goodbye to Charlie Hustle

Pete Rose was one of the best, most intriguing and sleaziest players ever-and he was also the face of baseball during the 1970s.

Pete Rose’s death marks the end of one of the most intriguing, extraordinary, sleazy and largest lives in baseball history. The basic outlines of Pete Rose’s story are reasonably well known. He was a great player with a reputation for playing hard all the time, a key player on the great Big Red Machine teams of the 1970s who became the game’s all-time hit leader, but later was banned from baseball for his gambling, spent a few month in prison for, of course, tax related crimes and then spent most of the last more than thirty years signing autographs and campaigning unsuccessfully to be let into the Hall of Fame.

That outline is generally accurate, but there is more to Rose than that. As a player, in addition to still being the all-time hit leader, Rose has the records for games played, times on base and plate appearances. Rose played in 250 more games than anybody else in baseball history and almost 500 more than anybody who began their career after 1980. Similarly, he came to the plate almost 2,000 times more than anybody in baseball history and more than 2,500 times more than any player who began their career after 1980.