CINCINNATI — Fans of Cincinnati Reds legend Pete Rose can reminisce on his greatest moments and learn more about his life via the recently released HBO documentary "Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose."
HBO first announced the four-part series on the MLB all-time hits leader and 17-time All-Star in July.
Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose, a four-part @HBO Original Documentary Series, premieres July 24 on @StreamOnMax. #PeteRoseHBO pic.twitter.com/STKx0AoQBY
— HBO Documentaries (@HBODocs) July 10, 2024
Timeline of Rose's career
Rose — also known as Charlie Hustle — began playing with the Cincinnati Reds at 21 in 1963.
He played with the team until 1979 when he went to play for the Philadelphia Phillies. He played for the Phillies until 1983.
Rose got 826 of his 4,256 hits during his five years playing for the team.
In 1984, he played part of the season with the Montreal Expos before coming back to the Cincinnati Reds where he was a player-manager. His last game was on Aug. 17, 1986.
He played with the Reds for over 15 years but continued to manage the team until 1989.
During his career, Rose won three World Series championships, was named National League and World Series MVP, received two Gold Glove Awards and was a 17-time All-Star. His No. 14 is retired in Cincinnati and he is in the Reds Hall of Fame.
Rose banned from baseball on Aug. 24, 1989
One of the biggest events in Cincinnati sports history happened at a dramatic morning news conference in New York in August 1989, where Commissioner Bart Giamatti announced he was banning Pete Rose from the game for betting on the Reds. This was followed by a somber news gathering at Riverfront Stadium, where a teary-eyed but defiant Rose continued to lie and deny he bet on baseball.
“As you can imagine, this is a very sad day," said Rose, pausing to clear the lump in his throat. "You know, I've been in baseball for three decades and to think I'm going to be out of baseball for a very short time ... hurts."
The Reds' erstwhile manager scoffed at a reporter who asked if he would seek professional help for his gambling problem saying, “I don’t think I have a gambling problem at all, so consequently I won’t seek help of any kind.”
He went on to challenge a question about his chances of getting into the Hall of Fame saying, “I did my part to get in the Hall of Fame. It’s up to you people who are doing the voting. I got all the hits, scored all the runs, won all the games.”
Rose also appeared to think the banning would only be a minor and temporary setback.
Giamatti and Rose had signed a carefully-drafted agreement that didn’t include a formal finding that Rose bet on the Reds. The agreement said Rose was being banned under Rule 21, which governs misconduct.
Rose was going to have to admit to betting on baseball and the Reds but Giamatti also said he would have to reconfigure his life.
After Giamatti died of a heart attack, he was succeeded by his deputy commissioner and friend, Fay Vincent.
Giamatti had privately complained that Rose put him through a “private agony” that summer by refusing to attend a hearing with Giamatti and going to court to challenge the commissioner’s authority to discipline him.
Once in charge, Vincent avenged his friend’s death by convincing the Hall of Fame directors to ban anyone on baseball’s permanently ineligible list from appearing on the Hall of Fame ballot. The 1991 addition to the election rules, formally known as Rule 3(E), is more commonly known as the “Pete Rose Rule.”
Over the next three decades, Rose’s failure to reconfigure his life, as Giamatti directed, doomed him to be an outcast forever.
For starters, Rose continued to deny betting on baseball for another 15 years, until he finally owned up to it in his 2004 book, “My Prison Without Bars.”
To make matters worse, Rose continued to bet — albeit legally — on baseball and other sports. Rose even moved to Las Vegas and set up his autograph table in casinos and hotels on the strip.
Vincent’s successor, Bud Selig, also a friend of Giamatti, refused to rule on Rose before he retired in January 2015, passing the decision to the next commissioner, Rob Manfred.
Manfred said he studied Rose’s case for months and gave Rose a face-to-face hearing in September 2015. But three months later, Manfred rejected Rose’s formal application for reinstatement.
In his published decision, Manfred said Rose failed to meet the minimum requirement – namely, “a reconfigured life” as Giamatti directed. To him, Manfred said, that meant "taking full responsibility" for Rose’s "wrongful conduct," rejecting betting and all of its associations and “seriously” seeking treatment for medical conditions Rose claimed had contributed to his gambling.
Manfred also said Rose lied to him during their meeting when Rose said he only bet on baseball in 1987 and that he bet on every Reds game. Manfred said those points were contradicted by the Dowd Report and betting notebooks unsealed in 2015 in a federal case involving a Rose bet runner, Michael Bertollini.
Aside from declaring that he couldn’t trust Rose to work in baseball again, Manfred did Rose a favor by saying he wouldn’t object if the Hall of Fame put Rose up for vote.
A year later, Rose’s attorney appealed directly to the Hall of Fame board, but President Jeff Idelson said the board held a conference call and voted to uphold Rule 3(E).
“We feel it would be incongruous to be putting someone on a ballot that is otherwise banned from the game,” Idelson was quoted by the Los Angeles Times.
At 78, Rose says he’s resigned to not making the Hall of Fame in his lifetime.
“I don’t think I will while I’m alive,” he told FOX Business in June 2018.
Rose said the honors he’s received from the Reds, who retired his number, enshrined him in the club’s Hall of Fame and immortalized him in a magnificent head-first-sliding statue at the entrance to Great American Ball Park, more than makeup for not having his bust in Cooperstown.
And while the betting landscape of sports has changed, with most states fully legalizing sports gambling in 2024, it still remains a Cardinal sin for an athlete or manager to bet on their own games. Recent examples of this issue include a coach for Alabama University's baseball team placing bets on the team's games here in Cincinnati, and an NBA player being prosecuted in connection to betting-related activity.
Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose will premiere at 9 p.m. on the 24th.
To learn more about the documentary or watch the trailer, click here.
A majority of this reporting came from former WCPO digital reporter and former Cincinnati Enquirer sports editor Greg Noble.
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