Heartbreaking: American former baseball player #Pete Rose is Gone….

the baseball diamond, Pete Rose did everything head on – barreling into infielders to break up a double play, diving headfirst on steals, famously flattening catcher Ray Fosse to score the winning run in the 1970 All-Star Game. He played straight up, hard-nosed baseball. No guile.

In other aspects of his career, however, it was pure evasion. As the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, he secretly wagered on games, in clear violation of Major League Baseball policy. When the scandal came to light, he issued denial after denial, and maintained that fiction for years, even after he had been banned from the game by baseball’s commissioner.

That lifetime banishment, rendered in 1989, left the man they call Charlie Hustle ineligible to enter the Hall of Fame, even though he’s baseball’s all-time hits leader with 4,256, a mark that may never be eclipsed. The new HBO documentary Charlie Hustle & The Matter of Pete Rose takes stock of the baseball icon at 83, hobbled by bad knees but still chugging towards his goal of getting into the Hall and baseball’s good graces. His age and basic human sympathy argue for him, as do his stats. But he remains a polarizing figure.