Miami Marlins outfielder Ichiro Suzuki is on the cusp of getting his 3,000th hit in the Major Leagues and recently spoke about Pete Rose being defensive of the all-time hit record.
Whatever side you fall on regarding who can claim the title of Hit King, you have to admit that the two players vying for the title are unique characters in the history of the game. Pete Rose has seemingly been in the public eye for close to 50 years. He came up with the Cincinnati Reds as a 23-year-old in 1963 and banged out 170 hits in his Rookie of the Year season.
Rose had 139 hits in 1964. That would be his lowest single-season hit total until 1983, when he was 42 years old. Along the way, Pete Rose led the league in hits seven times, runs four times, and batting average three times. He also led the league in plate appearances seven times, which was one of the reasons he was able to regularly collect 200 hits in a season. Rose simply refused to sit out a game; he didn’t want to miss a chance to add to his hit total.
Rose was an All-Star 17 times and finished in the top 10 in MVP voting 10 times, winning it once, when he led the league in hits and batting average in 1973. Rose also had over 300 plate appearances in the post-season. His teams made the playoffs eight times and played in six World Series, winning three titles. He was famous for being part of The Big Red Machine that won back-to-back World Series titles in 1975 and 1976. Rose was the MVP of the 1975 World Series when he hit .370/.485/.481.
Rose was a great player, no question, but one of the main reasons he was able to become the Hit King was his ability to insert himself into the lineup in the latter part of his career when he became the player-manager of the Reds in 1984. As a player-manager, Rose collected 192 of his career hits, enough to move him past Ty Cobb on the all-time list.
In fact, it would be fair to say Rose crawled his way to 4,000 hits and the all-time hit record. According to Baseball-Reference Wins Above Replacement (WAR), Rose was a below average player for the last seven years of his career and was below replacement level four times. From 1980 to the end of his career in 1986, Rose had 884 hits but it came with a batting line of .274/.354/.333. Combine that ugly .333 slugging percentage (especially for a first baseman) with below average defense and sub-par base running, and Rose was worth -1.4 WAR over his final seven seasons. Still, he was the Hit King and that’s all that mattered to him. You can bet on that.
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