Only a few weeks before he passed, Major League Baseball legend Pete Rose still hoped the league would give him a second chance to enter the Hall of Fame.
“I keep convincing myself or telling myself, ‘Hang in there, Pete, you’ll get a second chance,'” Rose said on Sept 7. Three weeks later, he was dead at the age of 83, never seeing that second chance come to pass.
“There’s nothing I can change about the history of Pete Rose,” the player and baseball manager told KLTV at the beginning of September.
“This is the one country that gives you a second chance,’ Rose added. ‘I continue to hope that someday I’ll get a second chance, and I won’t need a third,” he said.
Of course, Rose was banned from baseball after admitting he gambled on games while employed by the MLB.
Not only did Rose find himself excluded from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017, but he was also excluded from the Phillies Hall of Fame after news broke of a sexual relationship he had for years with an underage girl, starting in 1973 when she was reportedly 15.
Despite the accusations over the relationship, Rose was never brought up on charges and was never convicted of anything improper.
Rose did admit to having a relationship with the woman, but he claims he thought she was 16 when they first met.
“Charlie Hustle” is still baseball’s all-time leader in hits (4,256), singles (3,215), games played (3,562), and at-bats (14,053) and closed his career, hitting .303. He also won two World Series with the Reds and another with the Phillies.
Rose is also a 17-time All-Star, the 1973 National League MVP, the 1963 NL Rookie of the Year, and the 1975 World Series MVP.
He finished his career as a player-manager for the Cincinnati Reds and retired from baseball in 1986.
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