The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released a series of documents related to Pete Rose, the MLB’s all-time hits leader, who was banned from baseball and the Hall of Fame until the beginning of this year.
The documents, which consist of 130 pages, focus on Ronald Peters, the deceased Rose bookmaker, and a mid-1980s investigation into drug trafficking and gambling operations that Peters ran.
Some of the data contained in Rose’s file had already been covered in the 1989 Dowd report, requested by Major League Baseball.
Rose was suspended from baseball in 1989 after an investigation revealed his bets on the sport. In May, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred removed Rose from the permanently ineligible list, allowing him to be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame.
In the documents published by the FBI, it is not explicitly mentioned that Rose bet on baseball, something he himself later admitted.
Rose passed away on September 30, 2024, at the age of 83. Following a person’s death, the FBI makes public the records it holds on them, often with some redactions. Many names in Rose’s file have been redacted. It is not clear if more files related to Rose will be released.
In this publication, 125 additional pages were removed for being duplicates or for reasons such as interagency memos, personnel or medical files, an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, or the disclosure of the identity of a confidential source.
Among the documents is a 1987 memo requesting an FBI investigation. The memo cites a cooperating witness who stated that “at one point, Rose owed Peters $90,000 in sports betting losses.”
In the same memo, it is said that Franklin, Ohio police officers saw Rose often enter Peters’ establishment, called Jonathan’s, “through its private entrance.” The same memo alleged that Rose was a “silent partner in a bar that Peters operated in Cincinnati before [Peters] moved to Franklin.”
A November 1987 interview with a person whose name was redacted revealed that Rose bet on 10 American football games every weekend in 1986, typically between $1,000 and $2,000 per game, and that at one point Rose owed Peters $80,000. The person also “believes that Rose only bet on American football, basketball, and horse racing; he never saw Rose place a bet on a baseball game”.
The report also said that the person believed that another person “stole $3,500 from Rose’s money” and that person then left town.
The same person also told the FBI that Rose “sometimes places bets with a person known [redacted] only as [redacted] in New York when Peters does not accept Rose’s bets”.
In a summary of a March 1988 interview with a redacted person, the person said that someone was taking bets by phone for Rose, but that “if I had taken bets by phone for Pete, or if I knew if [redacted] did, I wouldn’t tell him. I don’t want to implicate a baseball player.”
A summary of a July 1987 interview with a person stated that this person was in a business partnership with Rose until Rose’s “gambling debts” created a financial problem for him. The person ended the partnership with Rose, but remained in contact with him and Peters, according to the summary.
Some of the documents had already been delivered to ESPN in a previous request for documents related to Peters, but Rose’s name was redacted at that time.
Most of the file focused on the FBI’s request for subpoenas for telephone records and surveillance recordings related to Peters. It is unclear whether any of those subpoena requests were also related to Rose or her involvement with Peters.
