Pete Rose Joins Ty Cobb in the 4,000-Hit Club

On April 13, 1984, Pete Rose doubled to right field off Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Jerry Koosman at Olympic Stadium in Montreal, recording his 4,000th career hit. He became the second player in major league history to reach that number, joining Ty Cobb.

The date carried a private significance. Exactly 21 years earlier, on April 13, 1963, Rose had collected his first major league hit, a triple off Pittsburgh's Bob Friend at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. He had reached the milestone on the anniversary of his beginning.

Rose was 42 years old, playing left field for the Montreal Expos in what amounted to a brief detour in a career defined by his years in Cincinnati and Philadelphia. The Expos had signed him before the 1984 season, and Rose rewarded them immediately. The game was Montreal's home opener, and the crowd gave Rose a two-minute standing ovation when the hit dropped.

The Expos won 5-1. Rose finished the game with two hits and a walk.

Hit number 4,000 was only a waypoint. Rose returned to Cincinnati in August 1984 as a player-manager and continued grinding toward Cobb's all-time record of 4,191. He passed Cobb on September 11, 1985, with hit number 4,192, finishing his career with 4,256 hits, a total that still stands atop the all-time list.

Rose's legacy became complicated by his permanent ban from baseball for gambling, announced in 1989. But the numbers he accumulated over 24 seasons, starting with that triple in 1963 and running through this double in Montreal, remain undisputed. Nobody has collected more hits in the history of the sport.