Pete Rose had everything you would want in a baseball player on the field. He was talented, relentlessly pursued victory and played as hard as any player to qualify. “Charlie Hustle,” as Rose was known in baseball, had the ultimate career: He won three World Series titles with the Reds and Phillies, was named Rookie of the Year, was named NL MVP and made 17 All-Star appearances five different positions.

Rose, who died Monday at age 83, is best known as baseball’s “Hit King,” having 4,256 hits over 24 seasons with the Reds, Phillies and Expos.

Off the field, Rose has perhaps the most fragile and complicated legacy in baseball history.

Infamously, in 1989, as part of a very public MLB investigation, the league’s committee found then-manager Rose guilty of playing baseball through illegal bookies. Former commissioner Bart Giamatti and Rose signed a formal agreement banning Rose from baseball for life in exchange for the league not viewing the signing as an admission of innocence or guilt.

During his suspension, Rose strongly denied ever betting on baseball. That is, until he admitted in a 2004 interview that he had actually bet on baseball as a manager, and a decade later he admitted he had done the same as a player.

Rose’s ban, which was upheld by all MLB commissioners after Giamatti’s death, also made Rose ineligible for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

His post-playing career continued to take unfortunate turns when, in 2017, he was accused by a woman of having a sexual relationship with her when she was a minor in 1973. When asked about the allegations upon his return to Philadelphia for his 1980 World Series team and being honored in a ceremony in August 2022, Rose replied to a reporter: “That was 55 years ago, baby.”

“Who cares what happened 50 years ago?” he continued. “You weren’t even born yet. So you shouldn’t talk about it because you weren’t born. If you don’t know anything about it, don’t talk about it.”

This is Pete Rose, the legendary player whose violations, both confirmed and alleged, apparently didn’t bother him. Unfortunately, it is human nature to forget much of a person’s life story when they die. And that’s what’s probably going to happen in baseball, probably what you’re going to see in the coming days and weeks.

Yes, Rose is a Hall of Fame talent who undoubtedly deserves to be enshrined as a player in Cooperstown. Yes, it seems hypocritical for sports leagues, including MLB, to do business with sportsbooks, kiosks and betting facilities in and around stadiums. And yes, Rose was still wrong when she bet on baseball.

Not to mention that in what Rose saw as a defense against the 1973 allegations, instead of speaking about his innocence, Rose publicly relied on his belief that it was “a long time ago,” a rebuff that was grotesque and discouraging.

This is not Willie Mays, a person who was as legendary off the field as he was on it. This was one of the greatest baseball players of all time who also happened to possess some hideous qualities of deafness. In the coming days and weeks, we’ll see many tributes to Rose as a player and individual stories about him as a person, perhaps even people loudly advocating for Rose to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

But unless one tells the full story of Rose’s legacy, the rest seems moot.