Pete Rose Bet On Baseball As Player, Documents Reveal: Will He Ever Enter MLB Hall Of Fame?

Pete Rose bet on baseball games as a player, according to a notebook discovered by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and reviewed by ESPN's "Outside the Lines." The documents confirmed that Rose participated in gambling on major league games as a player, a fact he had continuously denied since being banned from baseball in 1989, when he was a manager.

The documents, seized at the house of Rose associate Michael Bertolini in a raid two months after an investigation by Major League Baseball rendered Rose permanently ineligible to participate in the MLB, was the first written evidence against the all-time leader in hits who helped lead the Cincinnati Reds to two consecutive World Series championships, according to ESPN.

Rose applied for reinstatement to the MLB in March, and has continued to hold out hope that he would become eligible to be voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

In 2004, Rose admitted that he had placed bets on games as a manager, but refuted allegations that he gambled as a player.

ESPN reported that Rose issued a statement through his lawyer: "Since we submitted the application earlier this year, we committed to MLB that we would not comment on specific matters relating to reinstatement. I need to maintain that. To be sure, I'm eager to sit down with [baseball commissioner Rob] Manfred to address my entire history -- the good and the bad -- and my long personal journey since baseball ... it's not appropriate to comment on any specifics."